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The new covert surveillance technologies in use throughout the USA include mind-reading. The police state is closer than people think.
BEHAVIORISM, THE NEW CONTROL TECHNOLOGIES AND THE POLICE STATE
Brave New World (1932) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) have proved to be prescient warnings of the bleaker possibilities of the human future. The use of sophisticated technologies and the manufacture of fake news and histories for the purpose of controlling people are no longer science-fiction.
Today, with the creation of ever newer and more powerful technologies and methodologies of deception, the abuses spawned by the psychology of control and manipulation must be clearly delineated in the light of our own times. Further, we must clarify the distinction between the psychology of control and manipulation, on the one hand, and the psychology of light, on the other.
The modern forms of the psychology of control made their appearance in the wake of the experiments of Pavlov. Socially and politically they were identified in the west with the established Communist regimes of Soviet Russia and China. Since these societies were not based on human freedom and dignity, those who were in charge needed to find a handle for controlling large populations. Thus they were called police states. But even the USA has not been immune to the appeal of this manipulative approach, and we note, particularly after 9/11, a growing movement to create the police state in America.
The dis-connect between political movements and the ideologies or ideas they supposedly represent has always been evident. With Communism, for example, there was the problem of interpreting "the will of the proletariat," a problem ultimately identical with the age-old problem of leadership. The Cultural Revolution in the last days of Mao, like the guillotine in the French Revolution, showed us what the dictatorship of the proletariat might actually mean in practice: an opportunity for oppressed classes to express their resentment against the powers that be. But even such mass demonstrations are often, at least in part, the manipulated effects of an actor or group behind the scenes.
Subterfuge has long been part of the game. In our time this is even more obvious. So many actors are trying to control events. Between the ubiquitous spinning and fake news, the truth is hard to come by, and this creates a dangerous situation.
The focus of the present essay is on the use of the new technologies by "fake police" or "domestic terrorists" in the USA. This is not an obvious problem today, but it is a cutting edge phenomenon that reveals an amalgamation of the most unwholesome tendencies in our society: the embrace of behaviorism and the new technologies by those with the mentality of terrorists for the purpose of controlling the population.
One finds a high-minded defense of the behaviorist psychology in B. F. Skinner's classic Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971). Skinner, who did not believe in human free will, sought the modification of human behavior through positive reinforcement or the reverse. He offers an idealistic picture of the application of his thinking in the utopian novel Walden Two (1948).
Among those who resort to the behaviorist psychology we find therefore two groups. One, purely cynical, acts out of self-interest, or to maintain the power of a group or class; the second honestly believes that, given the limitations of human nature, the behaviorist approach is a reasonable one to take in directing the movement of large social bodies. Those who belong to the second category generally have a pessimistic (or physiologically determined) view of human nature and take an attitude that is closer to that of the policeman than that of the teacher.
The behaviorist approach has some valid applications, but the first business of modern society must be educative, not manipulative. The ultimate point of education is to bring forth to the maximum degree possible the type of higher man who alone can be equal to the future, assuming that that future is to be worth living. This becomes especially obvious when we consider the nature of the “controllers” or those making use of a type of behaviorism to mold “others” according to the ideas held by the controllers.
In the Communist world the Party assumed this role. In America it is played by a variety of groups, competing to control those who, not being controllers, get to play the role of the controlled. These are the people managed in the corporate world, the consumers both managed and catered to by marketers, the children molded by their parents and guardians, the flocks of the servants of religion, and even those who innocently turn on their TV sets to find out the news of the day.
In fact the controllers are far more numerous than the educators, since education, too, has become more a process of herding cattle than of actually educating humans. And most of these new controllers are far from the high-mindedness of B. F. Skinner. In America, as elsewhere around the world, the attraction of the behaviorist approach is its ready adaptation to the business system and the requirements of management. In the military it is of course the standard. Regimentation is fostered by control, obviously.
Freedom in the context of military life is something of a nuisance; likewise in the business world, at least in the eyes of the less imaginative managers. In fact, the tendency is to automatize and replace men with machines. Where the machines are not available to replace the human workers, the human workers are expected to assume a machine-like character.
After the 9/11 attacks carried out by a group of Saudi Arabian dissidents, the unfortunate tendencies already considered were given a special impetus, as the security establishment in the USA took hold in a new way, dispensing (sometimes with judicial approval) with some of the rights and liberties formerly considered sacrosanct. Technologies that had been under development for decades found new application as tools in the growing business of surveillance and control. These included not only the non-lethal weapons familiar to the interested public, but secret technologies such as brain-tapping (mind-reading) and the reverse (human programming), involving experiments with involuntary human subjects. These subjects were by no means terrorists, criminals or even suspects. They were ordinary people selected at random as targets or subjects for experimentation. Those who selected the targets and conducted the experiments were not officials of any kind and had no training in psychology; they, not their targets, were in fact domestic terrorists.
Nevertheless, they have been permitted to operate freely, without interference from the police, the FBI, or any other duly constituted authority. The clandestine nature of the activities is one impediment to investigation. A second is the false assumption that such activities, if real, relate somehow to the national security effort.
It is characteristic of these domestic terror operations that they employ multiple technologies. The incident involving American diplomats in Cuba, reported in 2017, may give the innocent reader some sense of what these attacks are like. In fact they are difficult to investigate. The Cuba incident was reported because it involved so many targets, all of them highly reputable witnesses, in an international situation. More usually the target is isolated, and is not even believed when he or she reports what is happening.
In the typical reported case, the target knows his mind is being read, because the attackers want the target to know he is under surveillance. The situation is comparable to that which exists between a prisoner and his interrogator and/or torturer. Given the new technologies, it is no longer necessary to have the prisoner in a cell. The brain-tapping acts at a distance; the target can be followed wherever he goes, and harassed and/or tortured at the whim of his shadow.
ISOLATION
We know that bad things are more likely to happen out of sight than before the scrutiny of the public. Therefore we are rightly concerned about the existence of secret prisons. This includes places actually unknown, but also places known, but within which the activities are shrouded in secrecy. An isolated person is easily made into a victim. But beyond the places like Guantanamo we have to consider that even in Manhattan, an artificial isolation can be created.
A targeted individual can be made to feel that he is actually crazy. Even if he knows that he is not and reports what is happening, he is usually not believed. It sounds crazy. It is hard for ordinary people to imagine that this kind of thing is going on here in NY and in other cities in the USA. It is easier to believe that the person making the complaint is a paranoid schizophrenic. This seems more plausible than the reality. A psychiatric social worker, who has neither the time nor the mandate to conduct an actual investigation, will make this diagnosis automatically.
In this way a targeted individually is effectively isolated, even though free to walk about. His computer is hacked and may be subjected to a virus or shut down altogether. His telephone service may be disrupted.
It is useless to go to the police. They have been told not to do anything in such cases. They do not investigate. We cannot say that the NYPD is complicit in such cases of criminal surveillance and harassment without an actual investigation. It is Catch-22. We do know that some of these criminal gangs receive considerable support from the powers that be, because, given the technologies they use and the time and devotion they give to their tasks, they are obviously well funded.
This may lead to another supposition, namely, that the targeted individuals are criminal suspects. This is not the case.
The targeted individuals are ordinary people. According to some researchers, tens of thousands of Americans are targeted, and the number may be even higher. The same program or a similar program is in place in other countries, and complaints are heard from China, Russia, Argentina, Canada and many other countries, about the use of the latest technologies for abusive surveillance and torture. We are not talking about what might go on in secret prisons, which may be even more terrible, but about what is happening to average people attempting to go about their daily lives, in NY and other cities in the USA and around the world. In essence, they are being used as guinea pigs in a cruel and inhumane experiment in which they are the unwilling participants.
HOW IS THE TARGET CHOSEN?
If someone is targeted for surveillance or investigation, the assumption of many is that the surveillance is, on some ground, justified. This is because it is also assumed that the surveillance is being conducted by authorized police or federal agents, who operate under the law. But those conducting surveillance may belong to a private group. If a private group is using peeping Tom cameras or the latest electromagnetic technologies (conferring the capacity for mind-reading and the complete invasion of privacy), in addition to hacking computers, that group is—by definition—criminal. It follows that they are targeting an individual for individual, and criminal, purposes.
Some say that the targeting is done at random as part of an elaborate national experiment.* This may be correct, up to a point. But we must draw a distinction between the architects and masterminds of this abusive program; and the many agents who perform the actual monitoring; not to mention various parties who, although not primarily responsible for the ongoing illicit experiments, play a complicit role either through their silent awareness or through the insertion of their own purposes within the larger system. Although some of the many agents may be sadists, most are probably what you would call regular people.** They follow the rules laid down by their superiors. The sadism is in the organized system itself.
Even in an authorized police operation conducted within the limits of the law, the onus is on the investigator, not the person being investigated, to justify himself. The fact that “investigating” groups remain unknown, hidden in the shadows, means they are easily confused with authorized police operating under the law. The intimidating nature of criminal gangs is augmented when they use anonymity to create the presumption of authority; in effect, they are impersonating police officers. The public animus toward the police may be, in part, attributable to these groups masquerading as police and using technological power to intimidate, harass and torture innocent persons, since they seem to operate without any notable interference from the NYPD. In fact, peeping Tom-ism is a gateway crime. It facilitates various additional crimes, as we have noted elsewhere. If groups are criminal in their inception (even if intended as an auxiliary or adjunct police force), we should not be surprised to find that they are criminal in their daily operation. There is nothing to restrain them. The essence of the problem is that extraordinary powers are given to individuals and groups without accountability.
If an individual member of one of these criminal groups has an argument with a neighbor, he may use his special equipment to carry out a “war” with his neighbor. If his next door neighbor is a pretty girl, he may use his peeping Tom technology to watch her in the shower or on the toilet or in her bedroom. Her privacy ceases to exist because of the whim of the operator of this equipment.
The groups that use these technologies may collude with abusive landlords. In at least one case they created an Abu Ghraib type situation for a senior citizen living in a rent stabilized apartment in Manhattan, with sleep deprivation and other forms of torture applied for over four years.
The illusion of the general public that those conducting surveillance operations are guided by the public interest is based on ignorance and wishful thinking. The flooding of the field with untrained and unsupervised operators, most of whom are operating outside the law, has resulted in a blurring of the lines between police and criminal activity; and may be, further, one of the causes of the increasingly low respect in which uniformed officers are held by the public; uniformed officers being, in the worst cases, even targeted for assassination.*
We may adduce a law of surveillance: As the operators become more numerous, are subject to fewer controls, and given less in the way of training and supervision; those targeted will be, increasingly, anybody and everybody, for there will be no restricting any of the endless variety of inclinations motivating the operators, be they political, personal or perversely criminal.
Ultimately we are in the insane asylum in which the inmates have taken over and all sane people are under watch.
THE PRESUMPTION OF THE WATCHERS
The presumption of those who advocate the extensive use of surveillance technologies is that the watchers are morally superior to those who are watched.* We know from historical experience that this is not always the case. The extensive police state of the Soviet Union under Stalin and the more naïve police state of China during the Cultural Revolution are two glaring examples that suggest that the watchers do not always know what is best. The sad image of Winston seeking the corner of his room not covered by the cameras in 1984 makes it clear that there is a price to pay for our submission to the need for surveillance; and this is the case even when surveillance is dictated by good intentions.
We would add that the watchers may suffer the degradation of their personalities as a result of their prolonged assumption of this role. Psychologically, an isolated aspect of the personality is artificially emphasized during the performance of their duties. When this is repeated and reinforced, there is a natural tendency toward a distortion of the personality of the watchers. This insufficiently considered aspect of the developing police state psychology must be considered. Indeed, the basic problem is that we have an increasingly marked distinction between the police and the public that is fundamentally unhealthy. Citizens are transformed into suspects.
As police work becomes preventive medicine, suspicion is elevated into a primary ingredient in law enforcement. This opens the door to prejudice and an enlarged field for the play of the subjective bias of the policeman. If this is an inescapable problem, it nevertheless underscores the need for a far greater testing, training, education and oversight of police officers.
The first desirable result of more extensive testing of police candidates would be the elimination of sadistic personalities and others who are obviously unfit for police work. Surveillance work, even more than the usual police work, requires the elimination of all personal bias. For example, anyone who found this work to be personally empowering would be better off in some other line.
THE INVISIBLE MAN
In the famous novel by H. G. Wells, The Invisible Man (1897), a chemist discovers how to become invisible. This leads him to believe that he is a superman no longer subject to the same laws as ordinary mortals. He goes on a crime spree, commits a murder, and eventually becomes the object of manhunt. At the end he is killed. It is, of course, too late for his victims.
The police, in their employment of the new surveillance technologies, have begun with a great infatuation with the new possibilities they afford. This is police heaven: the ability to spy on anyone at any time, without any supervision or interference from the civilian community or even from the law itself. (We are assuming here that some branch or branches of the national conglomeration of police forces are, in some way, making use of private, criminal groups).
The psychology of uniformed officers and undercover officers is completely different. The former are under scrutiny all the time and therefore tend to be careful; the latter, by contrast, have a cowboy mentality. In the instance of peeping Tom surveillance by private groups, the agents are not only undercover, they are invisible. Operating from a place of perfect safety, they feel empowered by their equipment and lack of supervision to do pretty much whatever they want to do.
The most fundamental conclusion is that the new technologies create new criminal possibilities. Existing laws and safeguards are not adequate to defend either the State or its citizens. When we refer to criminal possibilities, we have in mind, above all, private groups operating outside the law. But even those who are authorized to use these technologies must be monitored. The checks and balances system embodied in our Constitution must be extended to the operational realm, including not only the Courts, but police and national security activities, if the abuses of excessive power are to be avoided.
If, after investigation, the facts show that the NYPD has made itself complicit in the criminal activities of private groups, via a de facto privatization of police work, those responsible should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, even if they are Police Commissioners (retired or currently holding office). No threats or fears of any kind, justify such a delegation of authority.
GUANTANAMO, ABU GHRAIB AND
THE LESSONS LEARNED
We can only imagine what goes on behind closed doors and out of sight at places like Guantanamo. More likely we cannot even imagine it. Reports that have trickled out can only convey a small fraction of the horrors that are the daily food of those who are resident in such facilities. But we not have to tax the imagination, for some of the torture methodologies have already made their way into Manhattan and are being applied to tenants by abusive landlords. In other words, the lessons learned from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are precisely the reverse of what humane individuals may have imagined. Those who have learned to use the new surveillance technologies (which completely deprive an individual of privacy) in tandem with routine methodologies of torture, like them very much; and because the safeguards against their abuse have been so inadequate, they have been exported from these secret facilities to be used right here at the center of civilization on the most vulnerable members of our population; not on terrorists, suspected terrorists, or even minor criminals, but on elderly persons who have never committed a crime in their lives.
The fact is, abusive surveillance and routine torture are being normalized in New York City through the use of private, unsupervised para-military groups for purposes definitely outside the law.
TORTURE AND SADISM
Control involves usually a carrot and a stick, the capacity to give rewards and punishments. Torture is the extreme punishment. When we say we would permit torture to obtain vital information, we are saying that failure to give us the information we want will be punished extremely. The reward in this case is not to be punished. Perhaps also a glass of water is thrown in to sweeten the offer.
But the main reason for torture is usually the sadism of the one imposing it. The obtaining of information (or the achievement of another goal) is an excuse. It is declared that Johnny is whipped so he will be a better student. But Johnny may also be whipped because the parent or teacher enjoys whipping Johnny.
Sadism is a sickness of those who enjoy having power over other people. When we legitimize or turn a blind eye to torture, we certify the degradation of our culture, our nation and our way of life. The world takes note. The American stock has plummeted on the world market, for good reasons.
Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and posed no threat to America or any other country, we instituted at Abu Ghraib the American version of the house of horrors formerly run by Saddam Hussein. The world took note.
SADISM AND TECHNOLOGY
The new technologies and techniques of gang stalking currently used in NY and elsewhere around the world permit the continuous surveillance, harassment and torture of individuals who have never been charged with a crime and who pose no threat to anyone.
The unseen operators, as noted, are not police officers, and have no psychological training. They are, in effect, conducting illicit experiments using involuntary human subjects.
Once the target subject has been identified according to an individual brain pattern, psycho-somatic machines can be employed to deliver pain to specifically targeted areas of the body. This can be done without proximity to the victim. The pain may be moderate or sharp, depending on the will of the operator.
Voice transmissions can be simultaneously sent to the subject by the operator; for example: “Let me look at your teeth.” This is followed by a stimulus of pain given to the teeth of the subject.
We have already mentioned the mind-reader. This permits the continuous monitoring of the thoughts and even the dreams of the target. Such invasion of privacy might be itself regarded as a form of torture.
In addition there are sonic weapons, with adjustable frequencies, so that they may be either mildly annoying or acutely painful. These and some of the other devices are frequently used in the middle of the night to produce sleep deprivation. Laser beams are employed to deliver burns equivalent to those inflicted with a lit cigarette. Electronic devices can create (through ionization of the atmosphere, I believe) extreme discomfort in the victim.
Some of these technologies may require proximity, with the user in an adjoining room, but others, such as the mind-reader, operate at a distance.
Typically, the subject is made to hear continuous tape recordings, as well as the live voices of the members of the group targeting him. These recordings have multiple purposes and may also reflect the individual nature of the members. One purpose is to inform the target that he is being watched. Proofs are given that this is the case. Some recordings are obscene, evidently having the purpose of humiliating the target. His bathroom activities are noted. Others are more benign, either reflecting the distinctive personalities of dissenting members of the group or simply reflecting the time honored police game of good cop/bad cop. The main user of the technologies (the bad cop) is usually a sadist, and his real point is to hurt the target, irrespective of any other supposed purpose.
Because of the sadism of the user, he becomes addicted to the machines and techniques much as a drug addict is addicted to cocaine. This leads to the obsessive-compulsive over-use of the technologies for the wrong purposes. Insufficient manpower results in a lack of supervision. The harm to the target is obvious, but the user is also harmed and may descend into a particularly inhuman frame of mind (as a professional watcher, withdrawn from all normal social contact with the individual[s] being watched; as a torturer).
One purpose of these operations is the collection of information. This may lead to the use of information for some end, as, in the simplest case, the infliction of pain for the satisfaction of the sadist, as noted. Other purposes may be surmised. They may be economic or political. Abusive landlords and those with a strong interest in suppressing dissent seem to be leading the field in the use of these technologies. Harassment, for example, may impede the activities of a whistle-blower or journalist. The fact that this type of abuse is emerging nationally has resulted in inferences and speculations about the groups responsible. My own thinking is that there may in fact be many overlapping purposes, reflecting diverse players, loosely associated, each employing the new “system” for an individual objective. Others, including William Binney and Paul Baird, believe that the main purpose of these covert electronic assaults is the protection of organized elitist crime.
THE MISHMASH THEORY OF DOMESTIC SURVEILLANCE
When the technologies and techniques of surveillance and control currently in domestic use are described, they seem so bizarre and irrational to the average person that it is natural for him to believe that his informant is suffering from some type of paranoia. But it is not paranoia if it is really happening. The bizarre nature of the facts can be accounted for in part by the Mishmash Theory. No evil genius is guiding a coherent program; there are, rather, diverse agencies and individuals, public and private, with a variety of purposes and motives, loosely joined together in a national and local security system. Also, a mishmash of the technologies and techniques developed over the previous decades, are being applied. For example, some of the fascistic drug rehabilitation therapies that were developed during the sixties are today used by private anti-drug groups to stalk and abuse marijuana smokers; and these groups now have access to non-lethal weapons, computer hacking, mind-reading technology and voice to brain transmission.
One can guess how eagerly abusive landlords join forces with these pseudo-police. The real police may be more than happy to cede a portion of their responsibilities to these impostors and impersonators. When they are called to address issues of illegal surveillance and harassment, they are apparently helpless to do anything.
The illegal surveillance may at times turn up some useful bits of information for the real police or national security apparatus, and that will incline law enforcement officials to look the other way when it comes to the criminal activities of their unofficial assistants.
Thus there develops a peculiarly American form of police state, the result not of a single omnipotent power acting systematically, but rather of many players, some of whom, in the confusion, have far too much power and far too little accountability.
FROM FREEDOM AND DIGNITY
TO THE POLICE STATE
It is a mistake to over-emphasize the nefariousness of all of those complicit in these “security” efforts. For many more or less normal persons, such as B. F. Skinner, the ideal of behavioral control has appeared as an attractive one. Communism was also attractive when viewed as an ideal. In the concrete form of the Soviet police state, it was less attractive.
The developing American police state is based on the application of behaviorist psychology in conjunction with the newest technologies, many of them unknown to the public. Since many of the most potent forces remain invisible, they are outside the national debate. As a result the electorate is effectively disenfranchised. In part this is the fault of the excessive fearfulness of the voters, who cede inordinate powers to those charged with “protecting” them.
As the powers that run the show are increasingly invisible, uniformed police become scarecrows; they are scapegoats and targets as well, since an angry public must have someone to blame.
A NATIONAL SECRET POLICE
If one searches the INTERNET one can find stories of abuse along the same pattern in many other states, not to mention other parts of the world. It can be assumed that these groups exist in most major cities in the USA and that they represent both a national and global phenomenon. The focus of the writer is on the American situation and the implication of complicity on the part of the national law enforcement and security community.
There have always been black ops in the CIA. Now we have junior black ops domestically. Even undercover cops have been known to act like cowboys; it is easy to imagine the style of those who, without even being cops, are invested with virtual superpowers, and left to follow their whims without oversight and undisturbed by the local police or the FBI.
If the authorities are complicit, this amounts to a privatization of national security and policing, and the empowering of unaccountable entities to violate the law with impunity. If the authorities are oblivious of the crimes being committed daily by a nationally organized syndicate, they are derelict in their duty.
TELEPATHY, ORGANIC AND SYNTHETIC
The possibilities of telepathy and mind-reading were first brought to the public attention by writers in the 19th and 20th centuries such as E. Bulwer-Lytton, H. P. Blavatsky, H. G. Wells, Alice A. Bailey, and Alfred Bester. By the latter half of the 20th century they had become a staple of science-fictions writers. The related theme of mind control was also a popular topic, especially as it appeared in the light of the Cold War and anti-Communist hysteria, as typified by Richard Condon's novel The Manchurian Candidate (1959). Behind the veil of popular culture and unknown to the general public, scientists were already beginning to produce or seek technologies that replicated or augmented some aspects of potential organic faculties, such as telepathy, mind reading and hypnosis.
As of 2017, those technologies have reached a high level of development and are also being deployed in a remarkably cavalier fashion. Originally fostered by the military, these inventions have undergone generations of research and development, and have been tested in secret over decades. Lately, they have undoubtedly been used in interrogations in secret places such as Guantanamo. While the chatter of the surface world is of closing down Guantanamo, the underworld is quietly moving an invisible Guantanamo to Manhattan and other cities, where the new mind-reading technology is today utilized in sadistic games with victims who do not even know who is attacking them.
It boggles the imagination that the latest generation of these inventions has passed into the hands of perverts and police impersonators. Only the fact that these operations remain secret has prevented the public from demanding their immediate closure.
The technologies have been kept away from reputable psychologists. The latter would understand the dangers, the limitations and the potential constructive use of the new technologies. The operators do not. Rather, they are like children with a new toy.
In fact telepathy is a natural if undeveloped faculty of all human beings. Animals possess an instinctive telepathy. Mothers have it in relation to the children. The higher mental and spiritual telepathy can be developed, given a corresponding refinement and development of the whole organism under discipline. This has been demonstrated by many yogis.
A machine that facilitates this natural telepathy is not necessarily a bad thing. It can have immense educational significance and uplift the understanding of human psychology. That such technologies are, on the contrary, used for degrading purposes by untrained individuals and criminal perverts, suggests imbecility in high places.
PSYCHIC RAPE,
HUMAN GUINEA PIGS
By focusing on the brain waves of an individual, the users of the new technology can read his mind at a distance. Also, voices or other sounds (either recorded or live) can be projected by the users, so that the target is invaded both by the rape of his thoughts and by the imposition of voices or other sounds. This is a correspondence to the natural telepathy, receiving and sending, except that in this case the target is an unwilling participant.
Given the isolating effect of this brain wave assault, an impression is created that the targeted individual is crazy. This impression is created socially since the natural reaction of the majority to the victim's reports that he or she is under attack will be to assume that the victim is suffering from paranoia. Even the victim himself may wonder if he is going crazy.
It may be that we do not yet have adequate laws on the books to cover such cases, but there can be no doubt that what we are considering is a violation that may go far beyond an ordinary physical assault. This is especially the case given the fact that these psychic assaults—or at least those we have heard about—have been both continuous (24/7) and fantastically protracted in their execution.
Imagine such an assault carried out for a period of four years! It sounds unbelievable, but it is a fact that this is happening today—in New York and in other places throughout the USA. The average person will refuse to believe this. It sounds so senseless. Who would have the time, the resources, or the interest in carrying out such a fantastic experiment?
The word experiment provides a key. These technologies are new and not well understood. What are they capable of unearthing? What are their limitations? These are questions that have not been fully answered. To get answers, ordinary human beings are being used as guinea pigs. These are not volunteers who are being paid to submit themselves to testing. These individuals are being psychically raped.
There may be other aspects to these experiments, as well, involving both the operators and the general public. How willing are the operators to adhere to a program that is both illegal and unethical? Will they follow orders? How complacent will the American public be in the face of a subversive program designed to undermine democracy?
ABUSIVE LANDLORDS,
APATHETIC POLICE
It was not possible to find reputable psychologists to conduct such experiments. In one case in Manhattan the main operator was a former UPS man. Of course he was also a sadist, and this may be more to the point, as to his qualifications for his work.
His guinea pig was a neighbor living in the apartment above his own. The employer of the operator was probably the landlord, since an eviction was served on fraudulent grounds in tandem with the surveillance and harassment carried out by the former UPS man. Let us call him “Fred”.
After getting into an argument with his neighbor, Fred subjected his neighbor to intrusive surveillance and harassed him continuously for four years. When Fred’s neighbor complained to the police, they shrugged. When the neighbor called the property manager, his call was not returned. Later, attacked in the middle of the night for several nights in a row, deprived of sleep, and driven to his wit’s end, he made a great deal of noise, and was thereafter served with a notice of eviction.
This case shows the manner in which smaller players tag on to the larger system. It does not answer the larger questions.
How does an abusive landlord acquire this technology? Assuming that this technology is a military secret, how does it come to be deployed by a former UPS man without the slightest psychological training or security clearance? How does a harmless old man come to be targeted for such labor intensive monitoring?
Such incongruous details tend to support the idea that this cannot be happening in reality. It is insane. This is the natural conclusion of the average person who hears of such a story. Part of the explanation is the Mishmash Theory. Many small parties are achieving their own private ends through this invasive system and therefore support the system itself.
But what are the larger ends of the major players and to what is the system, with its enormous investment in time, energy, money and research, leading? Here the best guesses must echo the most paranoid nightmares of science-fiction writers.
THE DOMESTIC CONCENTRATION CAMP
One scenario is that we will have tens or hundreds of thousands of persons, and eventually the entire population of the nation, subject to this system. The thought of every human being will be monitored, or subject to such monitoring, and every citizen and non-citizen will be subject to some measure of behavioral control, including harassment or torture, if necessary. It will be especially useful to apply these methods to inconvenient writers, journalists, teachers, activists or politicians, in order to bring them into line with the thinking desired by the handlers; or, if this is not possible, subject the victim to such harassment and interference that the objectionable rebel is rendered non-functional and ineffective.
These ideas are hardly new. The subject of mind control emerged in the popular domain after WWII and has been in the air ever since. The difference is that now there are existing technologies and organized efforts to bring about the realization of our worst nightmares. This will occur in the absence of a counter-movement to see that this does not happen. As the forces of control gain ground through stealth, subverting both the democratic process and the rule of law, to oppose them there must be publication of the facts and a public demand for transparency. Our national security is not served by delegating powers without check or balance to unaccountable persons.
TECHNOLOGIES AND TECHNIQUES
Since a variety of technologies and techniques are being used in a variety of experiments by a variety of persons and groups with distinct motives and purposes, those who offer reports should attempt to be as specific as possible. We should not assume that all of these operations are identical in their methodology or purpose.
Some of the technologies are automatic and may continue virtually without cessation. Others are labor intensive. For example, if someone is reading your thoughts or dreams in real time, that means they are plugged into their thought reading equipment and focused on you in a way that is unusual.
One thing should be noted. Some types of personalities are drawn to this work, get off on it and become like drug addicts. The longer they stay on the job, the greater the degradation of their personalities. In one sense they are experiencing a superhuman enhancement of their senses, but simultaneously they show signs of tunnel vision, loss of common sense, loss of the sense of proportion, etc. In effect they are wired to the Matrix and lose their human nature.
All jobs impose something on the personality. This one creates a major personality distortion. It brings out the latent sadism. These people are playing God.
THE AMERICAN GULAG ARCHIPELAGO
The camps documented by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago (1973) were considered “Corrective Labor” Camps. The new camps today being created in America and elsewhere will be “virtual” camps similarly intended to provide their administrators with a corrective handle on thousands or millions of potentially rebellious individuals. Since today everyone is a suspect, ultimately the entire population will have to be under control.
The Gulag system in the Soviet Union was simply a crude application of Pavlovian or behaviorist psychology. In the Gulag system, individuals were isolated and forced to play the game of the regime or go under. In this way the dissident voice was taken out of circulation, and a lesson offered to those who remained behind. Later, during the Cultural Revolution in China, behaviorist psychology was applied again in a slightly different form. Re-education, based on group criticism, and the forced re-assignment of those in need of re-education (the intellectuals) to carry manure, were some of the prominent features.
We in America used to have the luxury of despising such regimes. Today we would do better to note what is taking place here at home under our noses. The new behaviorism is allied with advanced technology to create a systematic threat to freedom that is far greater than anything ever posed by the Communist regimes of the past century.
The devil is promising to keep us safe, if only we will leave him free to be about his business. Like the non-existent weapons of mass destruction that led us into our insanely costly and self-defeating second war in Iraq, the dangers posed by external terrorists are trifling by comparison with the forces here at home now poised to bring about our undoing.
The emerging technologies of surveillance and control, today undergoing rapid development and even more rapid deployment, are justified on the grounds that they are needed to safeguard us against crime and terrorism. On the contrary, these technologies have themselves become a new source of terrorism; there is no adequate safeguard against those who are given extreme powers with zero accountability.
In the behaviorist credo that “free will is an illusion” there is the death of the spirit. This is certainly the credo of those who believe most strongly in the supreme value of the marketplace. The parallel in the security world is the belief that the achievement of “law and order” requires that the population be monitored without restriction and subjected to operant conditioning, as if people were laboratory mice.
THE NEW WORLD ORDER
The many conspiracy theories are related to as many interpretations of the “new world order", the end toward which the conspiracies are supposed to lead.
Although conspiracies undoubtedly exist, none of them is omnipotent. The “new world order" is what everyone is fighting over. Just as there is not one vision of how the world should be shaped but many, there are not just a few powerful people in the world shaping the rest of us. Everyone has power and everyone can participate in shaping the world of the future.
If we evoke, occasionally, a paranoid vision of a possible future, it is in the spirit of taking steps to prevent that future from coming about. We could also paint a picture of an ideal future, in the manner of utopian writers. But it is more useful to realize that the present is a battlefield in which diverse views and motives are on display in relation to every single issue.
Commonly used terms such as “conspiracy theory” and “new world order” have so many different definitions that they have no meaning. Some conspiracies are real. Some are imagined. Some are real but their significance may be exaggerated. As long as the facts are largely unknown, confusion and fantastic conceptions are inevitable.
We should differentiate between hypotheses and facts. A targeted individual who encounters the facts of abusive surveillance and harassment cannot help wondering what lies behind the individual experience. Such an individual may be mistaken in his or her speculations about the underlying purpose or purposes, or even the magnitude of the effort. He or she may be mistaken about the nature of the technologies deployed. What is absolutely certain is that an individual is ferociously attacked; that a group of individuals making use of sophisticated technologies are responsible; and that a sophisticated crime is committed that is all the more extraordinary in that it is able to evade ordinary investigation. Later, the individual may come to realize that he or she is not alone; that many have been attacked in the same manner. It seems reasonable to infer that those responsible have funding and are organized. Unless one has special information derived from other sources, it is difficult to go beyond what has been asserted. Even if one has valuable knowledge, bringing it to the public attention is challenging, for various reasons.
If we focus on the phenomenon of electromagnetic gang stalking, it is because this is the tip of the iceberg. The truly secret operations and experiments are, by definition, those about which nothing is heard. It would be foolish to imagine, for that reason, that they don't exist. Nor should we imagine that such operations are conducted with integrity, wisdom or humanity.
Given the utter ignorance and depravity on display in the known operations discussed in this essay, we shudder to imagine the wholly secret and unknown operations carried out in the USA and around the world, including the abuses undoubtedly taking place in secret prisons and laboratories. This is not a conspiracy theory; it is simply a reasonable inference based on known facts.
The people responsible for these operations have ethical standards comparable to those of crime lords everywhere. They are willing to do whatever they believe they can get away with, if it will serve some purpose or desire of their own. To believe that these people are animated by a high minded concern for the national security is childish wishful thinking. That they are, apparently, given carte blanche by the people responsible for checking their activities indicates either timid complacency or a stupidity that is almost as frightening.
It is laughable hypocrisy that we have public debates about torture, as if the debaters in Congress and the judges in our Courts actually had some kind of handle on the situation.
BUREAUCRATIC PSYCHIATRY
During the fifties, sixties and seventies in the Soviet Union dissidents frequently ended up in mental institutions, which were used as prisons, an alternative to the Gulag.
Abusive psychiatry has never been the sole preserve of the Communists. The works of R. D. Laing, as well as the history of the persecution of Wilhelm Reich, reveal some of the deficiencies of western practitioners during the same period. Has this changed? Is psychiatry today more than a pseudo-science?
Those attacked by the system described already are easily channeled into the mental health system in place today. After a half hour interview with a victim, a psychiatric social worker will automatically write out a diagnosis of paranoia. Remember, no actual investigation has taken place. The police have artfully absented themselves from the scene of the crime.
Thus, precisely where one might expect to find help and sympathy, one will find instead the automaticity of a system that has not the least interest in discovering the truth of the matter. There are perhaps real psychologists to be found, somewhere, but they are not abundantly present in the clinics or hospitals in which victims might seek them.
This creates a Catch-22. The police don't investigate. Neither do the social workers. In fact, if a victim is talking to a psychiatric social worker, assumptions have already been made that lead away from the scene of the crime in pursuit of a red herring. The social workers will not discover anything, because they are not looking for answers in reality; they are only following a mechanical check-list. Moreover, their investigation is limited to the subject and is based on the assumption that the subject has a mental problem; the possibility that he is actually under attack is not even considered.
As a result victims are further isolated and end up having virtually nowhere to turn.
This is beginning to change as reports are chronicled on the INTERNET and information on abusive surveillance begins to make its way into print and other media, due to the work of a few activists and whistle blowers. Some politicians begin to take notice.
But where is the FBI in this? Is the FBI complicit? Or is it oblivious? Or is it merely under-staffed? Perhaps the FBI is engaged in one of those slow moving investigations that will eventually result in the arrest of the perpetrators and architects of this system of flagrant human rights abuse. We can hope.
CONTROL IS THROUGH THE EYE
“Control is through the eye.” This is an old saying that relates to the power of the human eye, and especially to the power of the third eye (when it has been developed), to control events, persons and animals.
The idea that surveillance is about data collection is limited. Of course data is collected, and may later be used. But the act of watching has significance in itself, apart from any later use of the data collected.
Even an atom is evidently disturbed by the observing physicist. An animal is not oblivious or insentient, since being watched may be the prelude to being dead. A girl, too, “has a feeling” she is being watched or noticed. And even the dullest man is affected by surveillance, even if it is not obvious.
Beyond this feeling of being watched, there are instances when the watchers want the watched to know they are “under” surveillance, for reasons implied by the language employed. It is an expression of dominance and control. The desire to control may have its motive in ordinary sadism or machismo psychology. It may have its motive in some utilitarian purpose. For example, if the desire is to disenfranchise black voters, they are observed attempting to register. Thereafter, something bad happens to them.
Ultimately, it is sufficient to observe them ostentatiously. This has the effect of conveying the lesson; or, rather, those “under” observation have internalized the lesson, and observation has the effect of a reminder. This is the manner in which operant conditioning, as applied by Pavlov to laboratory animals, is used on human beings.
This is behaviorist psychology in everyday life. The point is to bypass the human factor. The oppressed are reduced to the state of animals under control.
Of course there is also a benevolent watching, as of a caretaker or guardian. The problem in the ordinary circumstances of life is that it is difficult to know who is who. In general, when people are being watched by an unknown person, they are uncomfortable. In the absence of recognition, the assumption is that watching or being watched is a bad thing, not a good thing.
TYPES OF SURVEILLANCE
The theme of control through the eye is probably common to all types of surveillance. Beyond this, surveillance may be benevolent or hostile; it may be legal or illegal (categories not necessarily congruent with the first pairing). It may or may not be joined with activities apart from information gathering. The watchers may be known to those who are watched or they may be unknown; they may be visible or invisible. The purposes of surveillance are various but virtually always we may assume that a desire for control of the subject or subjects (those who are being watched) is part of the story.
There are of course cases of idle watching or voyeurism in which the act of watching has no purpose beyond the act of watching, and the act of watching is not preliminary to something more; or again the watching may lead to some type of normal relationship, involving mutuality. Shows which involve the assumption of watchers are another category in which mutuality is a basic principle. Our concern is with acts of surveillance in which mutuality is not a factor; in which there is an inherently coercive relation, and an effort on the part of the watchers to control the watched. It is important today to define these various possibilities because surveillance is increasingly commonplace, and new and powerful technologies give to the watchers a power to harm, far beyond the mere invasion of privacy, that must be checked.
When surveillance makes use of the latest technologies, it may be a police operation or a criminal operation. A police operation may or not be within the law; but a private group making use of illicit technologies is criminal, without controversy. By “illicit technologies” we refer to computer hacking, peeping Tom cameras, nonlethal weapons used for harassment, as well as the newest electromagnetic technologies that involve both intrusive mind reading (mental rape) and imposition on the brain of the subject with live voices or recorded messages. Surveillance technologies may be joined with a battery of tools to harm and harass the subject or to control the behavior of the subject in some manner. For example, a laser pencil may be used that operates through a floor, ceiling or wall, inflicting burns upon the subject, whose reactions are then read through the mind reader. Use of the laser pencil (a primitive form of torture, actually, comparable to burning with cigarettes) would require those conducting the surveillance to have proximity with the subject (possibly through possession of an adjoining apartment), but many of the most sophisticated new technologies (such as the mind reader) can operate over a considerable distance.
NORMAL SURVEILLANCE
In any more or less conformist society, everyone is “under” surveillance to a certain extent, and the watchers are everywhere; they are family, friends, neighbors and even passing strangers. At the workplace, the old fashioned personal supervision been largely replaced by spying through new technologies. In virtually all public places there are cameras. This is an unavoidable aspect of social life in the modern, technologically sophisticated world. Much of this unusual surveillance is justified on the basis of security concerns. As long as these security measures are in conformity with the law, there is little than anyone can say. If the laws are inadequate to cover the situations created by the existence and use of new technologies, then the laws need to be updated.
Everyone is influenced more or less by the presence of observers, whose opinions and thoughts matter, at least to some extent, to those who are observed. A few rebellious individuals resist or repudiate, if they can, these general social pressures, for better or worse. These rebels may be criminals, eccentrics or geniuses; or simply individuals seeking to establish more reasonable standards for the governance of life; a non-conformist is not a criminal. It is useful to ponder how desirable or how undesirable social pressures might be. Certainly, there are two sides to the coin.
In the Dave Eggers novel, The Circle (2013), recently made into a film, an example is given of some extreme possibilities, when the personal life of the main character becomes the consuming interest of hundreds of thousands of followers.
Everyone knows of cases in which the new technologies have been used in a very ugly manner. The technologies empower without conferring the wisdom to regulate the newly acquired power. Where before there was malicious gossip, slander and vile prejudice, today we have public shaming in which gossips and bigots mobilize public opinion via social media. A young girl is cyber-bullied by her “friends” and hangs herself. Fake news is sent out on the eve of an election with the intent of altering the outcome. New powers have been unleashed that our societies have not yet mastered. Many of these problems are out in the open and are already the subject of public debate.
When we come to the activities of those conducting special surveillance operations, we enter a realm that is hidden from public scrutiny. This secrecy creates an opportunity for extreme abuses. These hidden activities are not being carried out, as we might wish, by high-minded individuals devoted to the public interest; far from it.
A TAX WRITE-OFF FOR THUGS
Large scale surveillance abuses of the type revealed by Snowden are not the focus of our report. But even small targeted surveillance operations seem to have access to a considerable information network. Sharing of information among police and pseudo-police groups is increasingly employed, and this may create the impression that “they” know all about “you”.
“You” can be anybody: teachers, writers, journalists, tenants of rent-stabilized apartments, Democrats, people with political opinions, people from foreign countries or who know people from foreign countries, people who go to the library, people who read books, people of the wrong religion or skin color or the wrong sexual orientation, to offer only a short list. The fact is, anyone can be the subject of surveillance for any reason.
The watchers, too, can be anybody. The latest technologies are today employed by private groups to do just about anything they want. No one is stopping them. An abusive landlord can hire such a group to observe and harass a tenant he wants to clear out of his building. The group places the designated tenant under surveillance and applies techniques of harassment. This is a violation of the law, but the police do nothing to stop it. In fact it is probably a tax write-off for the landlord under the heading: Security.
SURVEILLANCE AND BUSINESS
As we noted already, surveillance is significantly allied with efforts to control a situation, a person or an animal. A hunter notes the habits of his prey and follows its trail. Even animals do the same, if they are predators. In business the boss monitors his employees. Why? He wants to eliminate non-productive behavior and reduce theft, either theft of time or theft of company secrets. He believes that the mere knowledge that they are being monitored will keep his employees focused in the way he desires.
Rewards and punishments follow from the assessment derived from this surveillance. The mouse who wants the cheese learns to perform as desired by the one who controls the experiment.
This is the way things are. It is widely believed that people are at their best when motivated by their self-interest. In business their self-interest is identical with the interest of their boss, whose self-interest is identical with that of his boss. Those who fulfill the given requirements get the cheese (are successful). Those who fail are fired or not promoted, but even in this respect they are useful: they afford the negative example that encourages the others to toe the line. This is Behaviorism 101.
THE MIRAGE OF FREEDOM
After work we have free time, assuming we don't have a second job, and don't need all our free time simply to recover from the stresses imposed by the workday. Free time offers an opportunity to discover that one is a human being and not merely a robot.
But however one may use this free time, it is definitely secondary to the main business of life, which consists of a submission to the machine-like demands of industry. This is the accepted norm. We set aside for the moment the lives of a small minority who enjoy actual freedom and establish their lives on a creative basis; or the lives of the idle rich who are free to waste time and resources as they please.
The point here is to understand the major significance of compulsion and voluntary slavery in our so-called free society. It makes little difference if one can choose to work at Company A, B or C, if Companies A, B and C are virtually identical.
The socialists who entertained the hopeful idea that automation signified an increase in leisure time were certainly mistaken. Technology would liberate us, they said. Since machines would be doing most of the work, humanity would be free to unfold that life of quality which alone makes life worth living.
Why has this vision not come to pass?
Why was there no peace dividend at the end of the Cold War?
Instead new enemies were discovered, and the worker, like Sisyphus, finds himself at the bottom again, doomed to push his stone up, up, up . . .
Perpetual war and perpetual slavery are neither necessary nor inevitable. They pertain to the status quo only because humanity has accepted and adopted certain dominant ideas and values. The ideas and values that have shaped the modern world belong to a Matrix that fosters compulsion rather than freedom, competition rather than human solidarity and cooperation; and materialism rather than spirituality.
As long as we embrace these ideas and values the world we see is all we have the right to expect. Under the ethos of materialistic capitalism and competition, it is only natural that wealth is concentrated ever more surely. It is the same game of Monopoly that we played as children. In the end one player owns everything, and the rest own nothing. As long as we believe in force rather than freedom, we will not bother to talk with those who disagree with us; we will attempt to bring them to heel. And they will hate us and treat us the same way.
REAL FREEDOM
The writer of this essay does believe in freedom. We do not go beyond freedom (as Skinner implied) by giving up on it. We have the freedom to choose. We have free will. We chose—or a significant majority chose—to embrace a Matrix of ideas that is bringing us to the brink of destruction. Let us learn the lessons of our collective thought-experiment and dig out of the pit we have made for ourselves.
We can have a world that is largely enemy-free, but we won't achieve it by killing our enemies. We will achieve it when we stop producing enemies in such abundance. We really need to slow down the wheels of industry, since so many of its products are poisonous. Our war machine, for example, is very big business.
What will it do when we need no more bombs or missiles? What of the unemployed workers?
These are backwards questions. Workers do not need unnecessary jobs. They need food to eat and homes. If they are real men, they need to find useful occupation. Sensible answers to these problems can be found in due course, if we are willing to consider the problems as free men, without relying on the wisdom of the market (a mirage).
A real worker does not need to be watched like an inmate in a maximum security institution.
His watcher is released from a useless task and his energy can be given to a new and creative purpose.
It is a question of whether or not we believe in humanity. If we believe in humanity we will seek every opportunity to put to an end the shackles of compulsion. If we do not believe in humanity, we will be afraid. The frightened man does not want his neighbor to be free, because he is afraid of his neighbor. In his mind he is safer if his neighbor is in prison. Frightened people are the most terrifying. After 9/11 Americans were frightened and in their fear they turned Iraq into a horror movie. The second Iraq War, so terribly costly, was both unnecessary and without benefit either for America or for Iraq. We would have been better off doing nothing.
So much of our busy-ness is self-destructive.
WHO IS WATCHING THE WATCHERS?
The basic problem of surveillance is that we must ultimately ask, “Who is watching the watchers?”
There is no completely satisfactory answer to this question from within the traditional paradigm governing western society. It is similar to the problem of interpretation, when the human mind is regarded as the supreme arbiter, rather than simply an instrument of the spiritual man. Contention is never-ending, short of final destruction.
The infinite cannot be comprehended from the position of the relative and the finite. In human terms this translates into the unworkability of the American idea of freedom. The problem is not that the people in the west, generally, and Americans, in particular, are too free. The problem is that they are not free enough. The half-baked freedom that is commonplace evokes coercive measures (on the part of some, to restrain the freedom others). Polarization approaches the extreme form of a civil war mentality.
The social problem mirrors the philosophical problem. As higher education and culture are pushed aside in favor of vocational education, Americans are prepared for the competitive world of business and simultaneously disabled when it comes to the facing of the larger questions in urgent need of solution.
We like to think that these larger questions have already been solved or that they are unimportant. This basic error has consequences that are growing exponentially.
Among these consequences are those discussed in this essay: reliance on increasingly universal surveillance, of a kind and degree that would have left Big Brother in awe; the tendency to regard citizens as suspects; and signs of an interest in using in military grade technologies to control the civilian population. This is not science-fiction but today's reality, even if it is an iceberg largely hidden from the popular vision beneath the chilly sea.
At the same time it is important to recognize that these tendencies are a logical outcome of the larger matrix of error. We can describe the problem as one of materialism, and offer, by way of explication, an example and a basic contrast of two diametrically opposite approaches.
The surveillance community longs to possess the “God's eye” technology, conferring virtual omniscience and omnipotence. The desire is almost as mad as the desire to employ cryogenic freezing to attain immortality. In the latter case we would await the day when “science” discovered the cure for death; in the former, we would merely await the arrival of the angelic supermen who could be trusted with the possession of knowledge and power over all humanity.
Such dreams and hopes are only a materialization and parody of the science of the soul. They ape the natural progress of the yogi, who attains above all self-conquest. Because of this he is fit to handle whatever knowledge and power fall into his possession. They are his by right. By contrast, if a lunatic comes into possession of a stupendous weapon, we can expect the worst.
The problem is one of mind control. In Book IV of The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the key ideas are summarized in Sutras 22-24:
“When the spiritual intelligence, which stands alone and freed from objects, reflects itself in the mind stuff, then comes awareness of the self.
“Then the mind stuff reflecting both the knower and the knowable, becomes omniscient.
“The mind stuff also, reflecting as it does an infinity of mind impressions, becomes the instrument of the Self and acts as a unifying agent.”*
The culture of freedom must aim at the illumination that ends ignorance, doubt and confusion. The alternative is to be policed by the same triad.
__________
* The Light of the Soul, p. 416-418, A. A. Bailey.
CHECKS AND BALANCES
Surveillance and control (knowledge and power), can be either good or evil. It depends on the type of knowledge and the nature of the knower, the type of powers derived, and the manner in which they are used (or the nature of the one who exercises those powers).
When it comes to the new surveillance technologies, these questions, of extraordinary significance, have never been seriously asked, let alone answered. Those with regulatory powers have abdicated their responsibilities. The result is a growing industry that we might label junior black ops. To be explicit, persons who have never even studied psychology are conducting illicit experiments on human guinea pigs. They are doing this not only at Guantanamo and similar secret sites but in NY and other American cities. These operations are heavily funded and enjoy the apparent support of the powers that be, at least to the extent that there is no evident interference with ongoing operations and no known investigations of the same.
If we take the perfected yogi, illumined and wise, as our paradigm, we are happy to allow that he may use his powers as he sees fit. When it comes to the average citizen, soldier, policeman or government agent, we have to agree with Madison that “men are not angels” and that due application of “checks and balances” is the best safeguard against abuses of power.
REMOTE NEURAL MONITORING
Apart from all the more or less normal purposes for which surveillance is employed, one purpose deserves to be singled out for special attention: experimentation. Since we are considering new and extraordinary technologies, the uses and limits of which have yet to be determined, it follows that there is a need for experimentation. No one could object to this if the experiments were conducted openly and volunteers offered themselves as experimental subjects. This is not the case. Instead, experiments have been conducted in secrecy and the subjects have not been volunteers. Those in charge of these experiments are not even psychologists. Untrained persons are experimenting with human guinea pigs in researches involving the prolonged exposure to unusual energies and impacting the individual psychology of the subjects, or victims, in ways that are clearly harmful.
Ordinary citizens are being selected as test subjects. I personally do not believe even proven criminals should be subjected to involuntary experiments, much less suspected criminals. Anyone can be a suspect in the mind of anyone else, and to make suspicion a criterion for the use of such technologies is to throw away the Constitution altogether. Moreover, the experimenters are typically private persons, not officials of any kind. Nor is a court order involved, as might be the case if there were a danger to the nation.
This is a fantastic scenario, difficult for many people to believe. For this reason the initial reaction of many will be skepticism. People naively believe that this cannot be happening. There are several barriers to acceptance of the facts.
First, both the development of Remote Neural Monitoring (RNM) over decades and the currently existing technology have been kept hidden from the general public.
Second, many people assume that if technologies such as RNM did exist, they might be used at secret facilities or in prisons, or in cases in which there was a suspicion of terrorist involvement, but they would never be used on ordinary American citizens.
Third, it is assumed that anyone involved in the use of such technologies would be a psychologist, or at least an official of some government agency, or some type of policeman.
But facts are facts whether or not one knows about them. RNM is an existing technology. It works. It is being used in American cities with ordinary citizens as involuntary test subjects. This experimental use has nothing to do with any terrorist threat; it takes place without a court order; and those who run many of the experiments are not psychologists or officials of any kind.
Nevertheless, however half-baked these experiments may be, there is considerable support and funding for their continuation. For the time being we will refer to the unknown source or sources of funding as “Deep Pockets”. It remains for an investigation to discover who, precisely, has been behind these groups and their activities on American soil.
THE GOD’S EYE
This term can be understood esoterically or exoterically. Esoterically, as symbolized in the Great Seal shown on the one dollar bill, it refers to the All-Seeing-Eye and to the directing intelligence underlying the world of human experience. The third eye is an individual correlation in the evolved human being. It remains undeveloped in the unevolved human being, and it is in connection with this distinction that the term Illuminati is used both correctly and incorrectly. The true Illuminati are the Masters of Wisdom, who act usually from behind the scenes and through their disciples in the world. But the term Illuminati is used often and incorrectly to designate a worldly group of powerful persons who would arrogantly control the fate of mankind.
Exoterically, the growth of new surveillance technologies replicates, to an extent, the development of the third eye. The important distinction is that the new technologies reveal only the rind of the story and miss the essence. The third eye “reveals primarily the light to be found in the heart of every form of divine manifestation.”* The fact that the users of the new technologies remain undeveloped spiritually and un-illumined leads to the high probability of abusive use of the technologies under their control.
__________
* The Light of the Soul, p. 413, A. A. Bailey.
The hacking problem is similar, as is the problem of weapons proliferation, generally. Technologies are being developed faster than the people who use them. This is an old story and was a frequent theme of H. G. Wells and Aldous Huxley, among others. But we do not always learn from our best and brightest.
Today the existential threat posed by this disharmonic development is greater than ever. The threat is traceable not merely to individual deviations from the norm but to a systematic bias that makes the unhappy result inevitable.
Efforts to attack individual problems often resemble the preoccupation of a mediocre doctor with the symptoms of a health problem while leaving in place all the causal factors. Symptomatic medicine is the most profitable, from a business perspective, but it is the least useful. For example, our efforts to fight the war against terror in Afghanistan and Iraq, while ignoring the fundamental causes, have been not merely ineffective but actually counter-productive, although extremely costly (and highly profitable to a few).
The final crystallization of our devotion to symptomatic medicine is our readiness to set aside the Constitution and institute a police state.
TRANSPARENCY
Because little is known about the two “pure” groups, much confusion exists concerning the Illuminati. In fact pure good and pure evil are rare, whereas the muddle in the middle is commonplace. The mere desire to possess advanced surveillance technology does not necessarily indicate a follower of the “dark path” of life. The essence is in the purpose for which one would acquire superior surveillance capabilities and the actual manner in which such capabilities are used, once acquired.
That being the case, questions concerning these matters cannot be answered simply with trust in the superior wisdom of a few privileged knowers. In the public interest, development and deployment of advanced surveillance capabilities must be as transparent as possible. Secrecy has become a fetish in the security world, and the result is that citizens no longer know who is doing what, or why it is being done; and voters are required to fall back upon faith to approve or disapprove this or that policy. This makes government, absurdly, a religion in which the mass is offered in Latin. Moreover, secrecy (like a blackout) is an encouragement to depraved practices; therefore, when it comes to surveillance, close monitoring and control of the watchers, through due legislation and the enforcement of existing laws, is indispensable.
SONIC WEAPONS
In the summer of 2017 it was reported that American diplomats were attacked by sonic weapons in Cuba. This is another scenario that many people find hard to imagine. But these weapons are now in use, and not only in Cuba. They have been used in Manhattan as well, and their use will probably spread all over the world, like all the newest inventions.
These are not usually loud blasts of sound, which would be obvious. The sounds employed may be at a frequency that is unheard by the human ear (but still damaging to the persons attacked). In the Cuba story it was reported that the victims were in some cases suffering from loss of hearing. In Manhattan, renters have been attacked by a battery of disturbing sounds and electronic weapons in conjunction with the illegal surveillance conducted by criminal gangs working for abusive landlords.
Sonic weapons may be audible or inaudible. If audible, the sounds may be loud and obviously obnoxious; but they may also be at low volume. If a victim is individually targeted, the sonic weapon may be sufficiently obnoxious to prevent the sleep of the target, but unnoticed by neighbors. If the police are called to investigate, they look only for an obvious noise complaint and do not investigate further. Since the MO of the police is known to the attackers, the attacks continue unabated.
MIND CONTROL
The term "mind control" suggests a total control of the mind of the victim, in the manner depicted in popular novels of the 1950s, such as The Puppet Masters (1951) by Robert A. Heinlein and The Manchurian Candidate (1959) by Richard Condon. This may be an ultimate possibility; it is, however, not a characteristic of most of the recorded attacks using RNM technology. Likewise, although the possibility of lethal attacks cannot be discounted, they are not the norm of the current frequently reported abuses.
We do not wish either to exaggerate or to minimize the danger. Each generation of these technologies is likely to be more sophisticated and potentially deadly. Likewise the organized systems for their deployment are and will be further developed than they have been in the past. This is why the problem must be dealt with now. Later it will be too late.
It is almost certain that groups within the USA are leading the field in the development and deployment of these weapons. These efforts must be brought to light without delay, and the frankly criminal activities must be brought to an end. The technologies must be understood, so that they can be duly regulated, and so that our nation may be able to guard itself against future attacks from without or within, even as we must learn to guard against the threat from criminal hackers.
CIVILIAN CONTROL
New Technologies have entered our world through a back door. Their existence must be acknowledged; their potentialities understood; their use regulated by law; and the laws enforced.
The NSA and the FBI must be accountable, first of all. If abuses extend throughout the nation, the FBI is culpable for inaction, at the very least. Is the NSA the source of the invasive technologies and their utilization by criminal groups? If so, those responsible must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
It is absurd that obviously criminal actions should be shielded under the vaguest claim of their being national security or police operations.
We are not opposed to reasonable security measures, but the security community has forfeited the trust of the public by spawning and shielding operations that are not merely abusive but insane. Obviously this community is incapable of policing itself. The civilian authorities must re-assert their right to supervise and control all police and national security operations.
If this is not accomplished in the immediate future, Americans may as well flush their Constitution down the toilet.
THE FASCIST IDEAL
The term “fascist” is sometimes applied to the exponents and manifestations of the police state mentality. In the origin of the term we find an emphasis on “obedience to the law” and “law and order” conservatism. In reality, however, there is no reverence for the law in the fascist personality, only a reverence for force, which includes the presumption of being the embodiment of the law.
In America no one is above the law. Although this is taught to the newest immigrants as a foundational idea of the American Constitution, some of our older citizens have forgotten this principle or else they slept through civics class and never learned it in the first place.
It is wrong to regard the fascistic temperament as conservative. The fascist is a reactionary radical; rejecting the Constitution, he is opposed to the very bedrock of American law.
DON’T ASK, DON’T BE TOLD
Under the Patriot Act judges were given the power, in special cases, to override the ordinary Constitutional protections of individual privacy. While there was much debate about this, a far more serious problem is never talked about, for it is much more common that the violation of these protections is NOT mandated by judicial order. Since getting the court order is troublesome and uncertain, it is easier simply to not ask for it and go ahead with the illegal surveillance. In short the law and the Constitution are by-passed. Of course this is always the case if the operators are criminals, but it is also sometimes the case even when the operators are police or national security agents. Such agents are said to be acting like cowboys, and because we like cowboys in the movies, there is a widespread idea that this is not such a bad thing. But it must be affirmed that when the police or national security agents act in this manner, they are violating the law and must be subject to the penalty of the law, as if they were common criminals. An intermediate category, neither the usual criminals nor police, are vigilante groups who act on behalf of some special interest. These groups are not under the same scrutiny as the official police forces; at the same time they have been given greater scope for action in the aftermath of 9/11. These fake police are currently responsible for the greatest abuses, for their criminality is a deliberate and systematic side-stepping of the law.
PEEPING TOMS AND POLICE IMPERSONATORS
While much is said about police brutality and illegal surveillance by the police department, almost nothing is said about the illegal surveillance conducted by private groups.
If someone is being watched or harassed by these fake police, he has no way, usually, of knowing that they are not police. They act as if they were police. In fact, they assume rights and powers that ordinary policemen would never dare to assert. The police know that there are boundaries. The police have to be accountable. For these private groups or fake police, there is no accountability. They do whatever they wish. In this respect they are like the Brown Shirts of Nazi Germany. Unlike the Brown Shirts, they have access to extraordinary new technologies that give them the power to act from the shadows and remain unseen by those whom they harass and torture.
Since their illegal surveillance includes computer hacking and mind-reading technology, they naturally have access to the financial information of the target. They know when the target’s apartment is empty. They know when his children are home alone. They know when his wife is in the shower, and they can watch her if they wish. In fact illegal surveillance facilitates additional crimes, including peeping Tom-ism, electronic theft, harassment, blackmail and torture.
What motivates these criminal groups is no agenda of public service, however misguided or misinterpreted, but the agenda of self-aggrandizement typical of criminal activity in general. Remaining invisible, these gangs can easily be mistaken for police or security people, and they base their activities on this ambiguity. They use this imaginary affiliation with the police department to empower themselves and cow their victims.
It is possible that the activities of some of these groups have been facilitated by individuals within the official security community, such as the NSA, the FBI, and/or local police departments. If this is the case, those individuals have been acting outside the law and in violation of the law. The probable reasons for this would be a desire within the official security community to have access to information illegally gained by criminal groups. Also, as some of these “protected” criminal groups have been acting as vigilantes, it would appear that some functions of the police have been privatized in an “unofficial” and conspiratorial fashion, with the intent of by-passing the law and by-passing public scrutiny.
GANG STALKING
Gang stalking is a nasty business. Like the gang-bangers who join together in a rape, a group of persons join forces for the purpose of a malicious and hateful action, an act of bullying or a crime.
Gang stalking is today facilitated by the new technologies, creating a lethal combination that is highly attractive to the fascist mentality, as it is to bullies and sadists in general. Those with the money or resources to invest in these types of activities can easily hire groups of thugs to carry them out. The employers may be landlords or their agents, or private groups of any kind. If government officials or police officers are participating in these activities, they are violating the law and the public trust. These activities have nothing to do with honest police work or security measures; on the contrary, they are shameful and criminal from start to finish, since an individual is singled out and targeted for a punishing assault without reason, evidence, due process or any of the standards that apply to civilized life. The attackers strike from the shadows and, because of the precise targeting made possible by technology, the public is usually unable to realize what is taking place and may even imagine that the victim is suffering from paranoia. Evidence in such cases is difficult to collect. Public awareness has not yet caught up with the facts of the new technologies, the new crimes and the new criminals.
Female rape victims have often experienced a similar lack of public sympathy. They were made to feel guilty for being attacked. The assumption was that they were in some way inviting the attack.
As the criminals benefit from secrecy and the public ignorance, the defense of the innocent requires that the facts be brought to light. Those who carry out these attacks are very comfortable in the darkness. They have been immune to prosecution. That must change.
COPS BLAMED FOR GANG CRIMES
Ultimately uniformed cops pay the price for the crimes committed by the private gangs. The reason for this is simple. If criminal gangs are acting with impunity, the assumption of the victims and of the public in general is that the law enforcement community is in some way complicit, either directly or indirectly through inaction.
Given the widespread nature of the activities referred to, and the absence of an effort to arrest those involved, the law enforcement community is either incompetent to a degree that defies comprehension, or else is complicit. This deduction is inescapable.
Since those responsible for these crimes are hidden in their bunkers, those who get blamed are the uniformed officers, who wear a target on their backs along with their blue uniforms. They become the scapegoats for a system that is out of control. In the present case, at least, they are entirely innocent, since they are in no way to blame for decisions made by policy makers, Police Commissioners and other highly placed law enforcement officials.
TORTURE BY REMOTE CONTROL
All of the activities we have already discussed can be, and are, used together for continuous 24/7 attacks on a given target. Obviously this is a systematic torture. While it is terrible enough to consider what undoubtedly goes on in some hidden places, where the torturers and their victims are in one room together, the possibilities raised by the new technologies multiply this horror many times and bring it into the mainstream of life.
We have already mentioned the possibility of a hidden attacker delivering at a distance burns to the body that approximate the burns inflicted by a lit cigarette. A similar device can be used to deliver a sharp pain to the teeth, approximating what a dental patient experiences under a drill without sufficient anesthetic. Or a pain may be delivered to any part of the body, the calf, the foot, the testicles, etc.
Sonic weapons can range anywhere from the mildly disturbing to the deadly. These weapons exist and are being used, as was made clear in the Cuba incident, but the knowledge of these weapons is not even in the public domain. This is the result of allowing to the security community a blank check to operate in secrecy, under the naïve assumption that everything these unknown people are up to is for our good.
The likeness of these practices to the familiar black magic should not be lost on the reader, for the root of their inception is the identical spirit. What has changed? Today the same evil practices are carried out with the aid of a different set of technologies and magic spells.
Today it is not Catherine of Medicis working through her favorite sorcerer and collaborator, or a voodooist striking his chosen enemy from a distance, but an organized junior black ops operation, generated (unofficially) from within our own government (and undoubtedly funded by the taxpayer), that employs the most sophisticated new technologies for purposes indistinguishable from black magic.
INVESTIGATIONS
The conclusions of casual investigators, as in the Cuba incident, are almost inevitably false, except in so far as they admit to a basic ignorance or mystery. It is almost impossible to investigate such attacks “from the outside” and only when we have informers “from the inside” offering their testimony will this and similar incidents be clarified.
We learn, for example, that the evidence of the Cuba incident defies “what we know about physics.” Some people misunderstand such a statement to suggest that the evidence must be fraudulent, whereas it simply points to gaps in the knowledge of the investigators, who are, here as elsewhere, too ignorant to be more than superficially useful.
We learn that sonic weapons alone could not produce the effects noted in the victims. This points out another possibility: that multiple weapons were employed. It seems to be part of the MO of these emerging criminal gangs that they employ a battery of weapons. It is not unreasonable to theorize that this may have been the case in the Cuba incident.
At least in the Cuba incident there were multiple reports, and therefore everyone believes that something happened, even if they aren’t sure what.
In the more typical incident an individual is isolated and his testimony is not accepted at face value. The typical “investigator” assumes that the individual has a mental problem. A harried psychiatric social worker arrives on the scene and after 15 minutes of check-list questions (such as “Do you want to kill yourself?” and “Are you depressed?”) writes down: Paranoid Schizophrenia.
Although worthless as a diagnosis, this label (which has the weight of professional opinion) further isolates the victim. His objective complaints are now viewed through the derisive lens of the diagnosis. This may have further consequence in the instance of a courtroom scenario, as it invalidates his testimony.*
The police, even when informed of the apartment in which one of these operations has its center, do nothing. They do not even knock on the door.
THE CLOAK OF INVISIBILITY
In the absence of serious investigations, victims of these crimes have no recourse whatsoever. The perpetrators remain hidden. In most cases, so far as bystanders are concerned, the perpetrators do not even exist. They wear the mythical cloak of invisibility, conferring the power to commit crimes with impunity.
The cloak consists in the fact that serious criminal actions can be committed through action-at-a-distance, while the perpetrators remain unidentified and off camera; and in the fact that bystanders often cannot realize that a crime has taken place, or else conclude that what is going on is a police or national security operation. Wrong assumptions, such as those that enter into the diagnosis of the amateur or incompetent psychologist, are typical; therefore they become part of the situation. Even those under attack may be confused. The result is a special isolation of the victim.
It is especially ironic that these criminal operations benefit from the shield of “national security” and the naïve trust that has been given to the law enforcement community in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. If unworthy elements have taken advantage of this trust for their own unworthy ends; this is, in part, the fault of the general public for being cowardly in the face of threats, and complacent in ceding responsibilities.
A CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION
Nothing less than a full scale national investigation can rectify these abuses. The public is kept in the dark too routinely, and the resulting abuses are just what might have been expected.
First, the technologies that are being so poorly used must be brought into the public light. There are proper and useful ends for these technologies, once they are brought under the control of a benign intelligence and kept out of the hands of perverts. There is also great danger in these instruments and the necessity for preventive measures, beginning with due legislation to safeguard the public from abuses.
The failure of our national security system must give rise a closer scrutiny, to guarantee that unlimited powers are not ceded to miscreants merely through an absence of checks or supervision.
Fear is a poor guide. The strength of our system is that is open and self-correcting. We are stronger, too, as we forge alliances and strengthen the common ties of humanity, than when we create a bunkered state based on American exceptionalism.
NON-LETHAL WEAPONS
When we first hear about non-lethal weapons, the idea seems to be a good one. Naturally it would be better if the police could subdue a mental patient instead of shooting the patient dead. This involves the use of a measured use of force. Less is more. The minimal use of force necessary is the ideal toward which civilization strives.
This assumes that some force is necessary or appropriate in the first place. If you have a neighbor who attacks you every day for the fun of it (and because he can), you might not think so highly of non-lethal weapons.
The basic issue is the excessive use of force, in any context or situation. Excessive force is not necessarily lethal. The husband who beats his wife may not kill her; the mother who screams at her children all day every day may not be arrested; but they are exponents of excessive force.
Torture does not always result in the death of the victim; even the damage to the victim may not be obvious; but torture is an offense against civilization. Only an insensate clod would consider it okay, or justify it with the fact that no death resulted, or that no death was intended.
A tenant harassed continuously by agents of his landlord for four years, using a combination of nonlethal weapons, is a victim of torture.
That such a thing is now possible indicates a depraved intelligence at work in a manner that formerly would have been described as insane. But this is fast becoming the new normal, given the new technologies and the eagerness with which they have been shaped into weapons.
Everyone is baffled by the Cuba incident. The people who could best explain it remain silent. No one knows more about the technologies involved that their creators; and they could be found, if a search were made, in the shadows of our own intelligence and security community.
Weird new weapons are on the loose, and they are not being reserved for some special cases, say, to actually protect the country against terrorist attack. They are being used for the most trivial purposes and with an abandon that emulates the excitement of a child with a new toy.
Before we start raging against Cuba, Russia, China, Iran or North Korea, let us start the investigation at home. No one is more responsible for the creation and dissemination of these new weapons than the powers-that-be right here in the USA.
AUDITORY HALLUCINATIONS
In writing about schizophrenia, Frank Rich, the author of an informative book titled New World War, notes: "The most common hallucination suffered by schizophrenics is the auditory kind, where the person experiences voices that are distinct from their own thoughts. These voices are usually derogatory—relentlessly mocking them. The voices may also comment on their ongoing activities and carry on conversations with them."
The new technologies confer on their operators the capacity to produce apparent symptoms of schizophrenia in their victims. This obviously constitutes an attack of the most insidious and vicious kind imaginable, equivalent to injecting a person with some type of poison to create a physical sickness. Instead of producing a physical illness, the attempt is made to produce a psychic illness or the apparent symptoms (appearance) of such an illness. The appearance of illness will definitely exist for "others" and may also exist for the person under attack. Such a person may be persuaded to receive treatment for a non-existent medical problem, while the actual problem, the electronic attack, remains outside the field of consideration. Such "treatment" must necessarily aggravate the original problem, while distracting from its actual source.
PARANOIA
As Paul Baird notes on his useful website, the amended definition of paranoid schizophrenia includes victims’ references to voices and also to their belief that someone is reading/controlling their mind. He further notes A) that technology allows illegal experiments to involve the remote causation of all these “symptoms” and B) that the psych bibles do not contain that “classified” information. Finally, he concludes, “This is so that psychiatrists can be used to discredit victims by joining them with those who have a genuine condition.”
PARANOIA
As Paul Baird notes on his useful website, the amended definition of paranoid schizophrenia includes victims’ references to voices and also to their belief that someone is reading/controlling their mind. He further notes A) that technology allows illegal experiments to involve the remote causation of all these “symptoms” and B) that the psych bibles do not contain that “classified” information. Finally, he concludes, “This is so that psychiatrists can be used to discredit victims by joining them with those who have a genuine condition.”
Let us pause over this charge, which has such awesome and sinister connotations. First, it is correct to put the word symptoms in quotation marks since we are not talking about a mental health issue but consequences of an electronic attack. If we exempt the psychiatric profession of deliberate collusion, it is confronted with a charge of incompetence and unwitting collusion. It would seem that the mental health industry has been used as a dupe and as an unwitting participant in a criminal conspiracy having roots in our own government. In atonement, or simply with the hope of re-gaining some self-respect, it behooves the industry to move to the front of the line in challenging this diabolical misuse of technologies, which directly attack the physical and mental health of Americans.
Apart from the immediate effects of an attack, the facile diagnosis of paranoia simply re-victimizes the victim.
If many of the people who have been attacked by gang stalking with the new technologies show signs of paranoia, this is only natural. One aspect of these attacks is that they deliberately create this impression, either to discredit the victims, or to undermine their self-confidence. The same malicious psychology is employed when a rapist or his attorney casts aspersions on the character of a rape victim, or when a whistle blower is attacked with the intent of invalidating his testimony. Disinformation is one of the weapons of the new domestic and international terrorism.*
In addition, many victims are genuinely and naturally confused, since it is difficult for a victim of these insidious attacks to ascertain what is actually happening. Some may in fact be paranoid, the paranoia in such cases being a result of actual attacks, and not an indication that the attacks are not taking place.
The difficulty of conducting real investigations into the matters under consideration has been noted. Nevertheless, such investigations are urgently needed, if we are to take seriously a criminal conspiracy that may be rooted in the bedrock of our national life. Cursory investigations get nowhere and merely lend credibility to the false idea that everything is okay.
TWO PSYCHOLOGIES
Today everyone recognizes the importance of psychology. While there are many schools, it might be useful here to highlight the fact that there are only two basic schools, and not many. The two main schools are differentiated by the motives animating those who use psychology.
Of the two psychologies, one is essentially educational; the other is manipulative. One has as its objective human liberation, believing in the essential divine value of the individual human being; the other has in mind the control of one group by another. The first is the psychology of the soul; the second does not recognize the soul.
We are not talking about academic psychology but rather about the way in which psychology is used in daily life. Most of the “users” are not professional psychologists. They are simply ordinary people with their own ideas, biases and aims.
Many of these ordinary users of psychology, through the inappropriateness of their motivations, approach that mode of life we would call evil. The only distinction is that they have not dedicated themselves to an evil way of life in full consciousness. They are only temporarily confused. For this reason it is important to clarify the fundamental importance of motives and purposes.
Most professional psychologists understand this very well, since there is an ethical code within the profession. But the non-professional “user” of psychology needs to be more aware, especially since psychological war “games” are increasingly commonplace and psychology is more and more used as a weapon.
Misinformation, for example, is a weapon based on the deception of an enemy. Conversely, if someone lies to you, you recognize that that person is treating you like an enemy.
As the security community grows in power and secrecy becomes a norm within our own government, there arises the situation that the government of the people treats the people as an enemy, a potential enemy or a child who has to be protected from the truth. Democracy is subverted since it is impossible for the people to be self-governing if they are deliberately deprived of knowledge of even basic policy initiatives. This raises questions about the thinking and motives of the people in charge.
The roots of the problem are in the science of behaviorism as developed by Pavlov and subsequent generations of thinkers, such as B. F. Skinner. Because of its materialistic bias, and its promise of conferring the power to control animals and humans (conceived as being virtually the same) behaviorism is attractive to those who think of government as crowd control.
It is also, naturally, attractive to elements in the military, police and security communities, and to elements of the business community. A modest application of behaviorism is quite normal; your parents may have attempted to influence you by threatening to cut off your allowance; that is, they tried to effect an alteration of your behavior, in your own best interest, as they saw it. Influence and pressure are a part of normal life. Only when they become excessive, abnormal and criminal do they constitute an intolerable threat to civilized life.
Pressure and intimidation can also backfire. A normal and healthy individual will resent and resist such pressure, if it is unreasonable.
Beyond the universal and normal social pressures that are exercised in the give and take of life, people expect or at least hope to be treated with the respect and dignity owing to human beings. To overlook this is to ignore what is most sacred and essential in humanity. This cannot be good policy, whether we are talking about the policy of an individual in his social relations, or that of a nation in its relations, both internal and external.
EXPERIMENTATION
The ethics of experimentation involving human subjects is well known. First, it is required that the subject should give consent to the experiment. Second, it is required that there be a reasonable certainty that the experiment itself poses no danger to the human subject.
Both of these criteria are ignored in the experimentation with the new technologies. Those who would insist upon these standards (legitimate psychological researchers) are excluded from the process, which is retained within the security community. In spite of this effort to retain the new technologies within that community and under its control, the security community is itself enlarged by the inclusion of numerous hired agents, none of whom have the slightest understanding of psychology or any fitness to be researchers. These hired agents carry out prolonged experiments with ordinary citizens as subjects (guinea pigs, essentially) in the most flagrant violation of ethical standards since Axis scientists used American soldiers and other unwilling subjects for medical experimentation during WW II.
The technologies themselves have potentially beneficent uses, if only they could be freed from the clutches of the psychopaths who currently control and use them as if they were weapons and could only be weapons.
It would be wonderful if real psychologists and educators could be given access to the mind-reading technology, for example. An educational tool that has the potential to advance the science of psychology and lift the human race is being used by perverts for sadistic games under a system whose creators belong in prison.
SPECULATIVE HYPOTHESES
A major problem of our society today is that public access to the facts has been compromised by secrecy and by a virtual deluge of prejudice and bias, misinformation, fake news and self-interested interpretation, all superimposed upon the basic ignorance. Mass ignorance may not have been such a problem in non-democratic societies since the people were not expected to know anything. They were not, after all, involved in their own government.
This problem is most acute than in relation to the topic under discussion. Three unprofitable outlooks dominate the mental landscape. One is the attitude of the man who assumes that, since the facts are out of his reach, it is not worth his while to bother thinking about the subject. Equally unprofitable are two extreme hypotheses, the Paranoid hypothesis and the Pollyanna hypothesis. The former assumes the worst of the powers that be: that they intend the worst and that they are all-powerful. The Pollyanna hypothesis assumes that are leaders are so trustworthy that we don't have to check up on them. I would propose a third theory, closer to the middle.
External threats require a reasonable vigilance; but they are not so great that we should surrender our way of life. Although there is hardly a coherent plot to enslave mankind, abuses within the security community do give some credence to the Paranoid hypothesis.
We give too much trust to those who already have too much power with too little accountability. The American government is based on checks and balances for reasons that become the more evident the more the basic principle is ignored. If we are to restore the national equilibrium, we must do away with the sub-empire of secrecy that commits the nation to policies unknown to its citizens. We must impose upon the security community adequate checks, safeguard against abuse, and restore transparency to government.
Coherent policies require first of all a comprehension of the facts. If we exaggerate external dangers, or over-rely on military solutions, we merely create new problems for ourselves, even as the completely unnecessary invasion of Iraq in 2003, engineered by a tiny clique, multiplied our problems in the Middle East.
EVIDENCE
If we want real information in relation to the matters considered in this essay, we can only get it from those who have been involved in the operations discussed. These will be either policy-makers or users of the new technologies (especially the mind-reader), on the one hand; or those who have been targets, on the other. Obviously those on the “inside” are sworn to secrecy and have reasons of their own for not coming forward. Snowden was an outstanding exception. We cannot rule out further revelations from the inside, especially if they are actively sought by empowered investigators, with a serious interest in making the facts known.
The targets themselves have been willing to speak, but they have not been taken seriously. Often they are confused and disoriented, and to many their testimony sounds a lot like the claims of UFO abductees in a previous decade. In fact, however, the targets can supply useful information, if they are interviewed carefully, without the disparaging assumption that these witnesses are suffering from mental illness.
If craziness consists in superimposing a false world view over reality, conventional people are crazy when they impose a false diagnosis of “paranoia” on someone who is simply reporting facts of victimization by operators of the new technologies, however unusual those facts may be.
The targets may have the ultimate insider's understanding of the new technologies. One factor that may help them is that there is often communication between users and targets. This may give the targets information about the personalities and motives of the users, as well as information about the technologies themselves.
If the mind-reading device were used simply for surveillance, the target might never suspect that he was being watched. His thoughts and dreams would be exposed, and he would have no idea even that his privacy had been invaded. Such operations may take place, but we do not hear about them.
The operations that have come to light are of a different type. Mind-reading is combined with computer hacking and gang stalking. The target is abused in a variety of ways and is informed of the fact that he is under surveillance. This is obviously intended to be intimidating. The target is bombarded with tape-recorded messages (directly targeting the brain and effective at a distance, like the mind-reading device itself, which works in reverse). There is thus two-way communication. Through the messages, which can be continuous, 24/7 for years, and through the behavior of the stalkers, the target may acquire an understanding of who “they” are and what their motivations are.
It is also possible to “talk back” simply by thinking. Clear verbal thoughts are recorded by the device used by the stalkers exactly as if they were reading text messages. In this way the target can reverse the process and may even be able to re-program his stalkers. This is important because it enables the target to remain positive; and it includes the possibility that the stalkers may themselves be “turned”, changed or healed, since they are, after all, human beings capable of redemption.
In the absence of such positivity, the target is liable to succumb to a victim psychology (passive, helpless and at the mercy of potentially sadistic tormentors). The harmful consequences of such a situation are too obvious to require emphasis, especially when the extraordinarily prolonged and continuous character of the assaults is taken into consideration.
The incalculable harm done to those who may not be capable of fighting back should outrage every thinking human being.
INTERPRETING THE DATA
The prolonged and labor intensive nature of these operations might seem to point to some highly important police work. This is not the case. It is clear that these are experiments. This purpose alone would justify the cost of these efforts and the time devoted to otherwise absurd operations, carried out by non-professionals and targeting random individuals. Although, as I mentioned earlier, the operations may have multiple rationales, experimentation is the mother-purpose, the ring-leader.
The operators, however untrained they may be in the field of psychology, are attempting to acquire an understanding of the limits of the mind-reading technology. What can be gained from it? What can be inferred from the data recorded on the screen before the operator? Probably both verbal and pictorial thoughts and dreams are there in some fashion. The problem of interpretation of the data remains, even when this unique data is supplemented by computer hacking and other sources of information. Even self-understanding is a deep problem, as psychologists well know. Understanding another is still more difficult. Can the operators distinguish between surface thoughts and deep thoughts? Can they distinguish idle fantasies from deep purposes? Such will be some of the questions facing an operator. Also, these operations are not limited to the understanding of the target, but to the control of the target in some manner.
If the target is not merely monitored but also harassed in some way, there will be opportunity to monitor the reaction of the target to the stimulus, whatever it might be. If the original Pavlovian experiments are recalled, it will be obvious that what is now occurring is a similar mode of experimentation involving involuntary human subjects.
These experiments are being carried out systematically throughout the country.
Each single experiment is small in scale and enjoys the cover of secrecy, given the factors already mentioned. The complaints of the victims receive no hearing. The police do nothing, if contacted. The perpetrators remain hidden and are fundamentally undisturbed.
If these unethical experiments are allowed to continue, it will justify the condemnations of the American system throughout the country and throughout the world. The most paranoid nightmares about the type of society that is developing in the USA will come to fruition, and the world will hear about the American Gulag Archipelago.
The alternative, of course, is to shut down these illicit experiments, respect the Constitution, and re-establish the norms of civilization.
ROOTS OF A NIGHTMARE
The over-specialization of professionals is a major cause of our modern national problems. The military, for example, was once based on conscription in times of need, and we had no standing army. There was no essential difference between civilian and soldier. World War II was essentially fought by civilians armed for the emergency.
Now, of course, we have a professional army. This was what we wanted. But some undesired consequences of the change should be noted. For one thing, a war is no longer everyone's business.
One type of person goes into police work and another type of person goes into teaching. But it might be better, socially speaking, if these fields did not produce segregation by type. Academics can become remote from life. Policemen can become desensitized.
The problems developing in relation to the security sphere are based on the mind-set of the people involved in that sphere. But they are also based on the absence of other types of minds, who might have, but did not, offer a corrective influence.
PROFESSIONAL PERVERTS
The problem of over-specialization is further exacerbated when a type of junior black ops is created, making use of relatively untrained persons for fundamentally criminal activities, including peeping Tom-ism, computer hacking, and harassment. The operators of the most extraordinary of the new technologies, the mind-reader, are recruited from the ranks of these criminal specialists.
Remember, these are not psychologists. They are ordinary people. Most of them are probably men who came to their present work through the private security sphere in the aftermath of 9/11, when security jobs were multiplying. They have been given extraordinary tools, which are not well understood, to use without much supervision. They have been encouraged to violate numerous laws in a manner that makes detection unlikely or difficult. They are conducting illicit experiments on involuntary human subjects. Thus we know that the operators are not fussy about ethical considerations or actual compliance with the law. The tools provided and the tasks assigned are a perfect opportunity for the exercise of sadistic tendencies. If any of the operators has the slightest tendency toward perversion, he has ample opportunity to exercise his inclination.
Is there a girl upstairs whom he likes? He can watch her in the shower.
He can even talk to her while she is on the toilet, whispering sweet nothings into her ear. She will not know where the voice is coming from, and he may find this funny.
If the invasion persists, she will end up in the office of a psychiatrist, who will diagnose her as paranoid and subject to auditory hallucinations. He will write out a prescription, which will be useless. Her mind is being destroyed by forces she does not understand.
Did the highly placed individuals who set up these groups not have the imagination or the commonsense to realize what their institution would signify?
The use of the mind-reader, without the consent of the subject, should be immediately outlawed. The technology itself must be studied under appropriate experimental conditions by real psychologists. The value of this new tool for educational purposes could be phenomenal. But first it has to be taken out of the hands of the perverts who presently control it.
WEAPONIZATION OF THE MIND-READER
Undoubtedly military planners and security professionals hoped to be able to use the mind-reader as a weapon. But for various reasons their hopes will probably not pan out. The data drawn from the mind-reading technology is labor intensive and requires extensive interpretation. As raw data, it probably does not offer much that is useful for military or security purposes.
This technology is nevertheless remarkable and offers profound opportunities for genuine research into human psychology, once freed from the control of sick minds. The current generation of illicit experiments reveals only the short-sightedness, narrow-mindedness and soul-blindness of the people responsible for them. Although something may be gleaned at vast expense with military application, the value of mind reading as a weapon will inevitably be reduced as defensive technologies are developed to shield against invasion. Moreover, anyone who knows about or suspects the mental invasion can play the system and feed into it misinformation.
The perverse utilization of an amazing technology is symptomatic of the absence of vision, common sense and imagination. Data is not intelligence. The various police departments are already drowning in data. They have so much information that often the sheer quantity of data merely gets in the way of intelligent decision-making.
Much of this data is false. Much of it is unimportant. Much of it has such a low value that it is not worth the energy involved in its processing. It merely clogs the system, keeps the processors busy, and prevents their finding anything useful to do with themselves.
THE MIND OF THE MIND-READER
We have already emphasized that the targeted individuals are essentially involuntary experimental subjects; and that the operators are individuals with little training who are "on the job" for long periods.
Much has been said by and about the targeted individuals, but little has been said about the operators. What does the operator experience?
First, the operator is aware of the thoughts and dreams of his involuntary subject for long hours day after day and, in many cases, continuously (with the help of a support team) for many years. He can also see what the TI sees. The protracted nature of these operations suggests something about their purpose, but here we consider merely the subjective experience of the operator. The assignment of a single main operator to a single TI (Targeted Individual) seems to be another characteristic of the program.
The operator experiences an expansion of his powers. He feels like a superman. Empowered by the technology and by the TI system itself, he experiences a fantastic inflation of his self-importance. The TI is comparatively helpless and is unable to prevent a virtual mental rape. Moreover, the operator also has equipment enabling him to have a physical impact on the TI.
As the role of the operator is to aggressively invade the life of the TI, the scenario as such is basically sadistic. In the language of criminal sadism, the TI is "owned" by the operator. This ownership extends to every aspect of the TI' s life, and the TI may become an actual slave, serving involuntarily as an experimental test subject; as a source of entertainment; and as a source of information to an "owner" who recognizes no boundaries or privacy in the life of the TI. The operator may also impersonate a police officer to borrow "authority" for his actions.
Although the operator "sees" the verbal and pictorial thoughts and dreams of the TI, he invariably invests or projects his own psychology in interpreting these psychic contents. His identity and the identity of the TI become confused in his mind.
He also confuses imagination and reality because he "sees" dream images just the way an ordinary observer sees a physical event.
All of these factors are augmented both by the lack of psychological training of the typical operator, and by the length of time the operator spends "reading the mind" of a single TI. Over time the operator comes to resemble an addict whose addiction is simultaneously intensified by his functional role within the TI program, and protected (in the manner of co-dependence) by the same program.
MAY I BORROW YOUR EYES?
While the mind-reading technology may have limited utility for spymasters, they will certainly not give up without exhausting the mine at their disposal.
More useful, perhaps, from their point of view, will be the piggy-backing on the eyes and ears of a target to acquire information. Imagine a Russian agent whose brain has been targeted. He goes back to his embassy. He looks at secret documents and automatically these documents are transmitted to a screen being watched by a monitor. Whatever can be transmitted can also be made into a permanent record.
Spying by borrowing the eyes and ears of the target, mind-reading and computer hacking can all be done without the awareness of the person whose privacy has been invaded, and presumably this would be the preferred case when the effort was being made simply to attain information.
In the case of actual national security issues, it would be hard for us to pass judgment on the use of such technologies, without knowing the details of a given case. But what constitutes a national security issue is itself frequently debatable, and it would seem that the bar has been set far too low in the aftermath of 2001, giving rise to a host of abuses, such as those described in this essay.
When the security mania extends so far as to involve the prolonged 24/7 surveillance of ordinary harmless citizens; and the new technologies of surveillance are combined with instruments of harassment and torture; we are not, we believe, raising a controversial issue, when we demand an end to systematic abuses and the prosecution of those responsible.
Beyond the more obvious harmful consequences of the abusive system today being employed in American cities, we may add that the invasion of privacy suffered by those targeted is shared by those who are even in the company of those targeted. There would be, for example, no such thing as a private conversation between those targeted and any person in their lives.
In addition, the brain of an individual subjected to the prolonged and continuous energy of these psychotronic weapons may be impacted in a manner unknown even to the inventors and users of the technologies. It is obvious that no thought has been given to the welfare of those targeted for these obscene experiments.*
PIGGY BACK
One explanation for the fantastically extended and costly operations of the new junior black ops is that they not only target an individual, they target everyone known to that individual. The individual target becomes a moving camera offering a “world view." An English tutor, for example, may provide a window on the world of foreign students; a journalist would provide information about sources; a dissident would provide information about other dissidents; the member of a minority religious group would provide information about other members of the same group; and so on. It is not essential that the target be suspected of anything; the target may simply provide a useful window on the world. The target serves as an involuntary and unpaid employee (i.e., a slave) for those who are using him, in addition to being an involuntary subject in a dangerous experiment. Lawyers who file suit for damages or press criminal charges may take note. Those whose privacy has been invaded, incidentally, through the violation of the primary subject, may wish to join in class action lawsuits. Attorney-client conferences are monitored as well as supposedly sacrosanct courtroom deliberations from which outsiders are typically excluded. Nothing is sacrosanct to the peeping Toms who piggy-back their targets, including marital relations between husband and wife. Even the toilet activities of the target may be monitored and the target informed of the fact.
These labor-intensive operations take the target as the center of a little universe and radiate outward from that center to include everyone in the world of the target. If the target is well-chosen, he or she will provide access to a social world that is of interest to the operators. Like the readers of a novel told from a single point of view, the operators follow an individual "character" throughout life into a social world to which the operators would not ordinarily have access.
This is an extension of the police practice of having an individual wear a wire. The wire is worn only for the purpose of recording sound and only for the duration of a specific situation or transaction, and the carrier is at least nominally free to wear or not wear the wire. With the new technologies the target has no freedom whatsoever, except to throw himself into the sea, so as to avoid being an unwilling informant to obviously unscrupulous groups. If he wants to live his life more or less normally, he must accept that he is a virtual Typhoid Mary who willy-nilly provides these groups with intimate information about his nearest and dearest. With the new technology both sight and sound are relayed to the operator, and the operation may continue indefinitely, or as long as the powers that be choose to provide an operator or team of operators, and the cost of the operation is underwritten (probably by the taxpayer).
HIGHER EDUCATION
How did we get to this point? The writer believes that the grotesque program under review could never have been started apart from a wider global and national cultural problem, a mental and moral atmosphere that suggests a need for fundamental re-thinking.
Higher education is not merely a collection of advanced techniques for the marketplace. Specialized vocational training does not take the place of the higher education which leads to a refined understanding of the human nature and the world as a whole. The quality of life is based on the acquisition of a self-knowledge which is integral with solidarity with humankind and sensitivity to the global environment. The creativity that begins from this point is social and constructive. Creativity that begins from the desire for self-aggrandizement is anti-social and ultimately obnoxious. What used to be called ignorance is today shamelessly promoted. Higher education has come to be regarded as an unnecessary detour, delaying or even impeding the fundamental business of life, which is to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible. The results of this thinking are increasingly evident in the ever more and more fractured world. Frustration and rage are the new primary indicators of growth, and there is no solution to any of our fundamental problems to be found within the paradigm in which they are sought.
Advanced specialized techniques and technologies merely develop a pre-established line of thought and empower a purpose that may be ill considered or unworthy of our time and energy. This is what does in fact happen when the higher education has been by-passed or receives inadequate attention.
The real values of our technologies are contingent upon the purposes that underlie scientific activity. There is an evil science or an evil usage of science, just as there is a beneficent science that has the power to elevate human civilization.
The emerging technologies of surveillance and control, today undergoing rapid development and even more rapid deployment, are justified on the grounds that they are needed to safeguard us against crime and terrorism. There is, however, reason to believe that these technologies have themselves become a new source of terrorism; moreover, there is no adequate safeguard against those who are given extreme powers with zero accountability.
In the behaviorist credo that “free will is an illusion” there is the death of the spirit. This is certainly the credo of those who believe that the achievement of “law and order” requires that the population be monitored without restriction and subject to operant conditioning, as if people were laboratory mice.
THE ALTITUDE OF THE SOUL
If higher education is misunderstood as the acquisition of specialized training, with the goal of incorporation into the existing business system with higher rank and pay, there will be no one to stand outside the system and critique it justly.
Consider how many classes there are on the minute management of a small business, and how each small enterprise is subject to the most thorough analysis, to determine what adjustments will maximize efficiency and profitability. On the other hand, the global economy is a patchwork and shambles, as ever increasing competition fosters disparity, divisiveness, war, unnecessary death and the privation of a vast portion of the human race. Even the “successful” are practically stunted by virtue of their inhuman sacrifices (either the sacrifice of other people or the sacrifice of some portion of their own humanity).
The “mind” behind this nightmare is not worthy of our highest respect. Humanity can do better, but must begin by thinking more comprehensively and clearly. The tendency to excessive specialization is symptomatic of a tunnel vision. The mind itself is only an instrument. But of what is it an instrument? This question must be answered in order to import into contemporary thinking an altitude that is largely absent.
THE FUTURE OF AMERICA
The trend of materialistic capitalism is toward ever increasing disparity.
The trend of the prosperous, intensified by concentration of wealth, is toward security measures.
The trend toward “security” at any cost leads us toward a police state.
The trend of science is toward new technologies in the service of business and the security state.
These four trends converge toward a technologically sophisticated fascism and the disappearance of America as we know it. The words and names of our democratic traditions may be retained, but they will be hollow, as the reality will have disappeared, just as the “Communist Party” in China continues to rule China, even though Communism no longer exists there.
A majority of people in America may be opposed to these trends, and certainly would be opposed to their inevitable result, if they could see it coming; but they need a better battle plan, if they would be successful in their opposition. Moreover, they must be not only an opposition; they must find a positive formulation of those values and laws that must govern America in the future.
The main problem is materialistic capitalism, leading to the extreme concentration of wealth and power. Disparity then produces polarization, with one side seeking “order” through perpetual war and the institutionalization of the police state, and the other seeking the undoing or destruction of that which is perceived as unjust.
The best solution would be the free realization of the prosperous, correcting the imbalance both globally and individually. The second best would be the mandating of solutions by the majority acting to limit individual wealth and power; and to re-distribute wealth, possibly through the progressive taxation that formerly served this purpose; in other words, the application of “checks and balances” to the modern world through the creation of a mixed economy combining capitalist incentives with socialistic measures. The mix would tilt more toward the socialistic, as a corrective to the current extreme tilt toward the capitalistic.
If the cooperative principle is applied for the general good, this will be to the advantage of the vast majority. While a few may complain, most will see that it is better that all people have food to eat, than that some eat in palaces.
LIGHT
Can the diversity of individual ideas of progress be aligned and harmonized into a synthetic program? Can conflict be reduced? Certainly this is possible, if the various ideas of progress are shorn of their unrealistic, unreasonable and flagrantly anti-social characteristics. In fact people are often their own worst enemies and at times entertain ideas and aspirations that are not even in their own best interest. When this is the case, the possibilities for conflict are increased, and people are even in conflict with themselves. But if individuals and groups can be liberated from at least some of their follies, the prospect for harmony nationally and globally will be greatly improved. This is a fairly basic notion. It is absurd to imagine any program for global progress apart from the fundamental liberation of humanity.
Clearly, the encouragement given to extreme competition is also an encouragement given to anti-social behavior and a source of conflict and warfare. Co-operation makes civilization possible. We reserve our arrows, if they are needed, but we should not promote the need for them as if preferring the worse to the better course. As humanity matures, the powers of the mind are more in evidence. This means not only new technologies but also more efficient and successful approaches to the way we do everything. It means the elimination of counter-productive behavior and wasted resources.
IN THE FUTURE
Experiments with the mind-reading technology must meet normal ethical standards and end the use of involuntary experimental subjects. The most useful experiments will be those in which the user and the target interchange their positions, so that the technology is understood from both sides. This is important both for the maintenance of right ethical standards and also for the right comprehension of the technology itself. This should be obvious to anyone with even an elementary understanding of psychology. The conclusions of the user, apart from real feedback, belong to a realm of subjectivity that places it essentially outside the sphere of science.
As it was noted by Patanjali long ago, one may know the thought of another but still not know to what the thought refers. Only an insensitive person would consider this absence of context irrelevant to understanding.
Data is not intelligence. The data must be interpreted, and this always points to the significance of the interpreter. Any bias in the interpreter will automatically appear in the conclusions of the interpreter, as he deals with the data presented to him by the technology with which he is working. A naive operator using this equipment without psychological training or even self-understanding can scarcely avoid drawing erroneous conclusions from the data available to him.
Technology should not be regarded as offering a substitute for organic development. It is merely an adjunct. Used properly, it may facilitate the mental development of humanity. But if it is imagined as a short-cut, we are ushering in an era of evil.
In Book III of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras we read:
19. Through concentrated meditation, the thought images in the minds of other people become apparent.
20. As, however, the object of those thoughts is not apparent to the perceiver, he sees only the thought and not the object. His meditation excludes the tangible.*
The whole yoga treatise should be studied by would-be operators of the mind-reading technology. It outlines the optimal mental and spiritual development pre-requisite to the sensible use of the new technology.
The use of these technologies should be strictly limited, and both the operators and their targets should be closely monitored for any disturbing signs. There is a danger in the use of these technologies; and this danger is increased as they are used over protracted periods, as they have been in the current, highly unethical experiments.
__________
* The Light of the Soul, A. A. Bailey, p. 279, 280.
The fantastically protracted and continuous use of the equipment in current operations; its use on involuntary test subjects; its use in one-way situations with one person in the role of operator and another (unwilling) person as the target; the absence of serious supervision or control; as well as the deliberately abusive system of combining the new mind-reading technology with a variety of non-lethal weapons for the harassment and torture of individuals selected at random (or for reasons known only to unofficial persons "inside" the conspiratorial system); all point to the fact that the current program was designed by persons deficient in intelligence, common sense, sensitivity and morality, even apart from the legal or criminal issues involved in the program.
We speculate that one reason for the protracted nature of the current illicit experiments is the difficulty with which the operator acquires useful information; another is the desire on the part of the "master minds" of this incredibly stupid system to have the users acquire experience in working with the new equipment and with the "system" itself, which, as I suggested earlier, seems to be a bastard compound combining the purposes of several corporate entities, private and public, with the individual purposes of the operators themselves.
Fortunately, the USA is not a fascist police state, as many fear. This will be proved when the system of abuse described in this essay is dismantled.
Curiously, the very next sutra in Patanjali's book deals with the subject of visibility and invisibility. The powers of the soul and mind in unison are, in fact, remarkable, but they are only developed through a lengthy discipline, such as that described by Patanjali in his treatise on the control of the mind through raja yoga. These powers are merely aped through technological means.
ON THE POSITIVE SIDE
The mind-reading technology, once released from the current regime of ignorant and unethical experimentation, can be really useful in fostering the understanding of human psychology and it may even be an adjunct in spiritual development.
It may give new power to the Delphic injunction: "Man, know thy self." Moreover, it potentially gives a social dimension to that same injunction.
Reality television appeals primarily to persons of an exhibitionist tendency, who offer themselves as "performers" or spectacle for idle watchers. But it can also be genuinely useful to be under scrutiny, and anyone who has been "vetted" or in a position in which one's actions are closely monitored, knows that behavior is modified by observation as it is modified by the context of concealment or secrecy. These important psychological criteria can be utilized in a constructive fashion.
In a new regime of experimentation in which we have eliminated involuntary subjects and eliminated also the one-sidedness of having one person always in the role of watcher and another always in the role of watched, by alternating roles, we can expect positive results. Such experiments could develop into an exciting and wholesome future gaming of immense educational significance.
Today we have reality television with its emphasis on external appearances, Olympic events with their emphasis on physical prowess, and computer games that emphasize a limited set of skills. The new technologies may offer a performance art that fosters the powers of the mind.
The target can use the fact that his mind is being read to "talk" to those who are monitoring him merely by thinking.
If he likes karaoke, he can "sing" without opening his mouth. He can make speeches or rap simply by thinking. The person who is watched is on stage and may practice his performance skills.
In fact, it can be immensely strengthening to be watched. This is what every leader goes through, and the capacity "to stand in the light" can be developed through an intelligent and voluntary subjection to the "group gaze" and to examination.
THE THREAT OF PRIVACY
Computer hacking can be ended or at least made far more difficult through the installation of defensive technology. Clearly, this is a good idea, if we value individual privacy, not to mention elections free from foreign influence.
The FBI and the NSA are concerned that this will protect criminals and terrorists. This suggests certain priorities; namely, that the FBI and the NSA are less interested in preventing actual crime than in preserving a maximum institutional capacity for surveillance and investigation.
These priorities remind us of the trade-off when a known miscreant is allowed to run loose because he is offering information that will lead, later on, to a bigger fish; or such at least is the proclaimed hope. The problem here is that it becomes more and more difficult to distinguish between the police and the terrorists. Of the double agent enmeshed in his own disguise, a great writer said, "You are who you pretend to be."
In fact, we witness a very dubious gathering of power into a central police apparatus with unlimited discretion, standing over and above all citizens, with individuals considered to be merely potential criminals, suspects or targets for investigation.
NOT CONTROVERSIAL
Some issues and policies are controversial in the sense that reasonable men and women can disagree about them. Others are controversial in an artificial sense. These artificial controversies are based on the fact that the matters considered are shrouded in secrecy or veiled by misapprehension. The controversy does not relate to the matters themselves but to their faulty apprehension by those who debate.
The domestic criminal groups discussed in this essay are in the latter category. We are convinced that no sane individual, Republican, Independent or Democrat, would consent to their existence for a single day, were the facts of their existence and nature common knowledge.
They are allowed to exist only because their existence itself is unknown. No one has given their approval because no one has been asked to grant it. Thus operates a virtual secret police, without authorization, without sanction, foisted on an unwitting public.
PRIVATE AND PUBLIC
Computer hacking and the ability to tap the brains of individuals are in the same category. They are powers that need to be checked, in the interest of civilization. If our laws and our police forces do nothing to stop these abuses, they are not protecting us; quite the opposite.
The proof of this is the activities that follow from these invasions of privacy. These secondary activities are, in practically every case criminal in nature.
The people who steal the private information from our computers and/or our minds are not the benign protectors of society. They are essentially the peeping Toms of the technological age: criminal perverts. This information gathering is a prelude to multiple crimes: electronic theft, harassment, blackmail, intimidation, torture, sex crimes, child abuse, rape and murder. Those who are exposed by the invasion of their privacy are vulnerable to every type of abuse.
The demand for ever more secrecy by intelligence and police agencies is based on the presumption that the men in charge of these agencies are angels of benevolence with unquestionable ethical standards. This has been shown again and again to be an absurdity. Blind trust in the "authorities" is unreasonable and the public should not be asked to give it.
This absurdity would reverse the character of public and private life. As public servants demand ever increasing secrecy for their own activities, they simultaneously demand the ability to know everything about the private lives of everyone.
It is not hard to see where this must lead:
Winston seeks a corner of his room where he can sit unobserved by Big Brother. But there is no such corner.
POLICE INCOMPETENCE
When the police ask for more and more powers, we should ask first why the powers they already have, have been used so poorly. With all the cameras, all the computers, all the information sharing, all the powers the police already have, there was no alarm raised when a solitary man who had acquired 33 guns in the course of one year, moved a large portion of his arsenal into a hotel room, and took his time to prepare for the massacre in Los Vegas in September, 2017. We will never know without a thorough, transparent investigation, precisely what went wrong. We do know that our national conglomeration of police forces messed up.
It would be wonderful to have the facts, the real facts, of that failure made public. I am not specifically blaming the police of Los Vegas. I am merely noting that the essential failure was never mentioned during the media circus following the shooting. My assumption is simply that if anyone is under surveillance in this country, the person who buys 33 guns in one year should be.*
If we compare the Niger investigation following the death of four American soldiers in Africa with the Los Vegas investigation, we find that the latter was merely a media circus that did not even bring to light the main point. We know more about how our soldiers operate in Africa than we know about police operations in the USA.
The police have enough power. But their leaders have a poor sense of priorities, which is cloaked by the secrecy of major policies. Their files stuffed with useless data on everyone and everything, they are apparently blind to the most obvious facts. Dangers inspire them to ask for more money. A well-publicized incident inspires them to make a show of being on guard in the days following. Indeed, the people who talk to the press after an incident are not the ones we need to cross-examine. We should cross-examine those who make fundamental national decisions and policies; who create the systems that abuse people, on the one hand; while failing, on the other, to fulfill the most basic police tasks. Does anyone know who these people are? Someone is responsible for the systematic and abusive use of the new technologies, just as someone is responsible for the failure to tag the Los Vegas shooter before he struck. Presumably more than one person is responsible. Who are they? Let us bring them out into the open where they can claim and defend their activities like men. It is time to place the folks in charge of our national security under scrutiny. Clearly, some of them belong in prison.
TRANSPARENCY
The assumption that government secrecy serves security must be questioned. This is only an assumption that has been accepted in the absence of serious thought, whereas if government secrecy is a source of aberration, it cannot also be a source of security.
It can be posed as a creative problem to answer: How can transparency be introduced throughout the whole of our government, eliminating all secrecy, while at the same time preserving the security of the nation and its people?
It should be recalled that the modern security state was a gradual and fairly recent development, not anticipated by the Founding Fathers or the original Constitution. Many of our existing practices are nothing more than the crystallized result of the makeshift policies of decades. They may have answered the need of the hour, but the whole business of government, including all matters of military and police jurisdiction, is greatly in need of the renovation that can come only through some fundamental thinking.
One example is Dennis Kucinich's recommendation: the creation of a Department of Peace. We spend a great deal of money, energy and thought preparing for war and disaster, and we get what we prepare for.
To some this seems foolish. The point is that a subtle shift in the psychology of our nation, continuously manifested through our policies, foreign and domestic, can produce the gradual disappearance of the types of problems faced today.
Once again we quote Patanjali, from Book II of his Yoga Aphorisms:
35. In the presence of him who has perfected harmlessness, all enmity ceases.*
The key is to seek the root of the problem. It is useless to cut off one head of the Hydra. The whole problem must be dealt with by going to the source. Then it can be buried forever.
__________
* The Light of the Soul, p. 194.
SECRECY AND POWER
Let us consider the Cuba incident once again and recall how it was portrayed in the press. Something was done to our people. Our diplomats were the innocent victims. But as to what actually occurred, it is left as a mystery. The implication is that Cuba was responsible. As usual the public is left in the dark; worse, it is manipulated by the appearance that America is under attack, that America is an innocent and aggrieved party, and that Cuba is guilty (at least to the extent that the Cubans failed to protect our diplomats).
In so far as there are people within our own government who could shed some light on these mysteries, but do not, their omission amounts to a campaign of misinformation. Such is the reign of secrecy. The American people are played for fools. As long as a significant portion of the electorate remains under-educated and misinformed, that will be the case.
The American diplomats in Cuba were indeed innocent victims, just as many American citizens are today victims of unknown forces, acting from positions of secrecy and power. Although these forces remain unidentified, we should not imagine or assume that they are all from other countries. Nor should we imagine that those from our own country are on our side. They are not. They are on their own side.
THE SURFACE WORLD OF COMMON MEDIA
A Cuban representative has denied involvement in the attack on our diplomats and suggested that the story is science-fiction. The Cuban representative may be offering what he believes to be the truth. The probability is that he doesn’t know the truth. So often the “representatives” offering information to the press are only the uninformed sharing their ignorance with the public.
There is no special reason to believe that Cuba was involved in the attack. The leading suspects, in my opinion, are American and Russian groups. They would be the most likely to have both access to the technologies employed and motive for the crime.
How carefully we have to listen to the news, reading between the lines, and asking why the story is being told in one way and not in another way. If we follow the Niger story, we might wonder why the deaths of four American soldiers in a war zone are more shocking and unexpected than the massacre of 59 concert goers in Las Vegas. Evidently, the army is expected to keep soldiers safe even when they are active in hostile territory, but concert goers must know the risk they are taking when they attend an event in the USA.
At times a story seems to get too much attention, at times not enough.
At times a story seems to be covered from the wrong angle. Much too much attention is paid to the statements of people who have nothing to say, either because they know nothing or because their purpose is not revelation, but evasion or deflection. This is not news. It is air pollution.
Since the “news” that we hear is usually only the tip of an iceberg, we have to be analytical. Every surface report is subject to a variety of interpretations. Many attempts are made by various parties to manipulate these stories, to “spin” them, and to focus the public attention one way or another; worst of all, those who are “in hiding” are more than happy to keep the public uninformed, misinformed, or distracted by entertainment.
If the Cuban attack was engineered by a Russian group, it was one more attack in a series that includes the campaign to corrupt and influence the 2016 American Presidential election. If an American group was the culprit, this was a treasonous attack on US diplomats with the probable intention of altering American foreign policy through a covert attack that would (probably) be blamed on the Cubans. Neither of these possibilities is a certainty, but it should be evident that knowing what happened is of some importance if the electorate is supposed to be capable of adult judgment; or if the members of our government are supposed to be capable of taking right action.
In the matter of the Niger attack, it seems absurd that the unfortunate operation would be reviewed over the evening news. More pertinent is to acquaint the public with the fact that we have hundreds of soldiers in Africa. They may be there for good reasons, if it is worth our while to support legitimate governments under attack from the people who specialize in turning children into involuntary suicide bombers. Once such a public policy decision has been made (and this much should be transparent), the public should allow the military leaders a reasonable discretion. It is, however, unreasonable to imagine that military efforts in a war zone will be perfectly safe and casualty-free, and equally unreasonable for the media and the public to micro-manage an effort that most people never even knew was under way, prior to the death of the four American soldiers.
DEMOCRACY ON TRIAL
Policies are created on the basis of what we know or believe to be true. If we are misinformed or uninformed about the situations with which we must deal, we are obviously handicapped when it comes to forming a policy or plan of action. This is so well known that the military relies on misinformation as a weapon, the object being to handicap an enemy.
Unfortunately, the same factors enter into play when the electorate is called upon to endorse a policy or choose a candidate for high office. Evidently, the Russian attack on the American electoral process in 2016 was based on just such considerations. Domestically, considerable efforts are made to manipulate the news cycle, and to shape not only how events are perceived, but which events are focused on by the public. These efforts can be more or less honest.
Clearly, we face a modern crisis in the democratic process. Democracy is on trial and on retreat globally. American influence is waning as a result. Many conclude that our system does not work very well. Without an informed public, it cannot. Without transparency in government, the electorate has no business endorsing one candidate or policy over another. It is not able to give consent, because it has no idea what it is consenting to.
TERRORISM
Terrorism is considered especially important because of the magnitude of the danger supposedly offered by terrorists. Two other factors are usually present in our idea of terrorism: one is that we are actually made afraid; the other is that we are made afraid for a purpose. The terrorist act or threat is designed to influence the policies of nations, groups and/or individuals. The intent may be, for example, to reduce tourism in a country that depends on western visitors for its economy, thus isolating that country.
Merely killing a large group of people is only a terroristic act if the people remaining behind, afraid that such acts may be committed in the future, are influenced to make changes in their way of life and policies consistent with the desire of the terrorists.
While it is naturally repugnant to people and governments everywhere that they should be intimidated into altering their way of life, weaker people and nations often succumb, because they are not able to resist. For a great nation or people this is unthinkable. We should, however, give some consideration to the possibility that we may ourselves be sometimes the cause of the problem. To cite one example, our own CIA, in violation of international law, helped to depose the lawfully elected leader of Iran in the 1950s. Today Iran is our enemy. Who is at fault?
Indeed, significant "situations" can be created by parties operating in secret and in violation of the law. As a result the democratic public policy may be predisposed to take a direction in line with the intent of those unknown parties. Russian interference with the 2016 Presidential election comes under this category. Such interference is not, however, limited to foreign enemies. It may be domestic in origin. Even if the culpable parties are not precisely unknown, it may be sufficient that their guilt is uncertain and may be publicly denied. Ambiguity can be as almost as useful as anonymity.
If our "open" policy debates are only dealing with created situations, while the actual causes of those situations remain obscure, then the public is easily manipulated by secret parties, and democracy becomes a meaningless exercise.
In addition to the terrorism of bombs and bullets, threats, bullying and torture, or the terror of deprivation, we must today consider the terror which makes the truth itself an inaccessible mystery by casting every issue into a fog of misinformation.
MYSTIFICATION
Mystification is the art of the cover-up. When it comes to criminal activity, we admire the bold bank robbers who carry off a heist in broad daylight. It is refreshing in its honesty. The mugger who knocks you down and takes your money is at least not trying to pretend he is your friend.
The worst criminals wear camouflage and prefer it if you do not see them so clearly.
In a recent case of sexual abuse the culprit was a doctor for Olympic athletes. As a doctor he had authority, and authority, like expertise, can be used to make people see what is not there, or not see what is there. If a 13 year old girl is told by her doctor that she is receiving “medically necessary treatment that he had been performing on patients for over 30 years,” how can she object?
Authority empowers those who abuse it to create an alternate reality. We are right to hold doctors, teachers, journalists, occupants of public office, policemen and parents to a high standard. Trust alone is insufficient. We also take steps to verify that this trust is warranted. Perhaps someday this won’t be necessary, but we aren’t there yet.
FALSE AUTHORITY
False authority is at the heart of mystification. A spiritual person may trace this falsity to human egoism. Egoism may be warily noted; but it can also be embraced with bombastic pride or concealed with hypocrisy. There arises in the latter cases a false positivism that demands a following, however little that following may be deserved. This false positivism has its apotheosis in the deliberate deception of the con man, but it is also present wherever more is promised than can be delivered.
The psychiatric social worker who delivers a facile and false diagnosis of paranoia after a 20 minute interview is little more than a con man. The policeman who subverts the law for some end that may be, in his own mind, desirable, is a police impersonator and a criminal.
We can go on and on to enumerate the failures of those in high position. The priest who doubles as a child molester is becoming as much a stock figure as the politician who takes bribes. Our mistake is to have too much faith in these people in the first place.
Madison had it right: “Men are not angels.”
CONSENSUS
We spoke earlier of several trends that were converging to define a possible future. To these trends we must add the breakdown of conventional thinking, the loss of common values, and the growing chaos of modern life. Within this context the police state will find its advocates, and those who seek "order" based upon power alone will find their opportunity. The materialization of this dark scenario assumes the inability of the forces of light to avert the downward spiral of converging trends.
The growing disparity created by materialistic capitalism can be offset by a spiritual capitalism or by measures of amelioration established by law. Such measures will help to foster a common national security interest, which does not exist today and cannot exist as long as class or party interests are dominant. If Americans have nothing in common, neither common values nor common interests; there can be no American nation. Military, police and security needs can be re-assessed in the light of an agenda of peaceful progress and cooperation.
Only with the establishment of such a context nationally and globally can new and powerful technologies find constructive application for the betterment of life. In the context of never-ending war and conflict, technologies become weapons as a matter of course.
IN SUMMATION
In summation it seems incontrovertible that there exists within the USA a criminal conspiracy with roots in high places and the tacit support of law enforcement agencies. If these agencies do not support this criminal conspiracy, they are criminally negligent in the performance of their duty for allowing it to persist.
The conspiracy consists in the systematic utilization of new technologies for the purposes of illegal surveillance, human experimentation and torture. It could only have had its genesis under some program masquerading as national security and evading the normal scrutiny to which national policies are subjected under the routine checks and balances of our Constitutional government.
The conspiracy has a significance that goes far beyond the individual crimes which can be attributed to it, for it represents a step in a progression that could eventually prove fatal for the American way of life; it signifies the creation of a secret police force empowered to operate not only outside the law but even outside the public view. While shielding itself behind the usual "national security" rhetoric, the conspiracy is responsible for crimes that reveal a contempt for law, morality and reason.
The public must demand a full investigation.
It is no longer possible for ordinary citizens to look the other way, with the vague hope that "they" (the police, the national security people) know what they're doing. Some of them may indeed know what they're doing. But this is little consolation if their interest is not the interest of the public or the nation. Among those who are innocent of criminal wrong-doing, many are nevertheless guilty of silent complicity. It is time for them to speak out and take a stand for the security of the nation.
SECRET PRISONS
From a psychological perspective, what stands out is the utter depravity of the creators of the "system" under consideration. To foist this system on the country, secrecy was essential, for the simple reason that the public would not condone it, were the public to know about it. This underscores the need for transparency in the creation and implementation of all public policies, including those related to our national security.
The police would like to know what people are up to. Conversely, the public would like to know what the police are up to. It works both ways. Power and position do not release one from criminal temptations; on the contrary, power and position make easier the commission of more terrible crimes. We are not so far removed from the Holocaust, the witch burnings and the Inquisition, that complacency is warranted.
Perhaps inevitably we move toward a more transparent society. Privacy is a diminishing prospect. While it is reasonable to protect what remains of human privacy, like a diminishing natural resource, it may be more important to put an end to the secret prisons, the hiding places of the filthiest forms of human evil. It is not the prisoners we need to worry about.
NOTES
*p. 10—Some who have been most active in exposing the crimes of electromagnetic harassment, such as William Binney, have claimed (BiggerThanSnowden.com) that they originate with criminal cliques operating within the military-industrial complex. I cannot address that charge and would prefer to focus attention on the large number of operational agents and partly complicit actors. It is likely that a serious investigation will begin at the periphery of this problem and work towards the center. These agents are ordinary people. Many of them were probably drawn into this abusive operation with false claims to the effect that they would be aiding the national security effort or else assisting the regular police. If more of them would speak out and identify both their contacts and the nature of the technologies with which they have been working, it will be possible for investigators to work their way back to the root of the problem and to those who belong on trial for treason and domestic terrorism. Let the Attorney General offer these agents immunity, if necessary, but get them to speak and name names. We need to know where this problem originates and how it got started so that we can bring it to an end.
**p. 10—In a tv drama in the sixties William Shatner portrayed a psychologist conducting an experiment to see how willing ordinary people would be to inflict pain upon unknown strangers, if they were instructed to do so. The "victims" were in fact actors, out of sight, who were merely making sounds indicating their suffering. The real subjects of the experiment were those encouraged to inflict pain. A few refused to do so, but many complacently followed the instructions of the authority figure. The drama was based on an actual experiment.
*p. 12—If we could investigate the background of those who have targeted police officers for assassination, what would we find? What has driven them over the edge? What has inspired their animosity for the uniformed police? We should not assume that the causes lie wholly in the observed facts and relations between the police and the public. One cause may be electronic harassment by police impersonators. Since these criminal groups operate from the shadows and are readily confused with police, the police may be blamed for their activities. Those in hiding are safe. The uniformed officer wears a target.
*p. 13—Public support for information-gathering, in general, rests upon the assumption that the information gained through surveillance will always be used for righteous purposes, such as the defense of the homeland against terrorist attacks. This is far from being the case. Obviously, information gathering through sophisticated technology would not be advertised by a harassment campaign, if the target were an actual criminal or potential terrorist. On the surface, such a combination of surveillance with petty harassment seems ludicrous and suitable only for a keystone cops comedy. It is equally obvious that if surveillance were related to national security or serious police work, it would not be conducted by private (i. e., criminal) groups.
We cannot say how surveillance activities are abused in the many cases that are beyond the reach of public scrutiny. In the case of the private criminal groups that are the subject of this essay, they have incriminated themselves and revealed their criminal character through the very nature of their activities.
Surveillance confers a potential power to those who have access to it. We cannot assume that this power is ever and always used for benign purposes. Illegitimate surveillance or peeping Tom-ism is a gateway crime. It permits harassment, electronic theft, interference with political opponents, the silencing of dissidents and numerous other crimes, depending on the disposition of the particular criminal group which is empowered in this manner. The criminal groups discussed in this essay cloak themselves in the presumption of authority. They are easily confused with legitimate police by those who are targeted.
Since neither the FBI nor local police departments have shown much interest in taking action against these groups, the question of passive complicity on the part of official law enforcement groups is raised.
*p. 76—The plight of the "diagnosed" was well understood by R. D. Laing.
“There is no such ‘condition’ as ‘schizophrenia,’ but the label is a social fact and the social fact a political event. This political event, occurring in the civic order of society, imposes definitions and consequences on the labeled person. It is a social prescription that rationalizes a set of social actions whereby the labeled person is annexed by others, who are legally sanctioned, medically empowered and morally obliged, to become responsible for the person labeled. The person labeled is inaugurated not only into a role, but into a career of patient, by the concerted action of a coalition (a ‘conspiracy’) of family, G. P., mental health officer, psychiatrists, nurses, psychiatric social workers, and often fellow patients. The ‘committed’ person, labeled as patient, and specifically as ‘schizophrenic,’ is degraded from full existential and legal status as human agent and responsible person to someone no longer in possession of his own definition of himself, unable to retain his own possessions, precluded from the exercise of his discretion as to whom he meets, what he does. His time is no longer his own and the space he occupies is no longer of his own choosing. After being subjected to a degradation ceremonial known as psychiatric examination, he is bereft of his civil liberties in being imprisoned in a total institution known as a ‘mental’ hospital. More completely, more radically than anywhere else in our society, he is invalidated as a human being."
R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience, Chapter 5, “The Schizophrenic Experience”, 1967.
The above quotation emphasizes the questions about the “schizophrenia” diagnosis even within the psychiatric community under “normal” conditions (i.e., apart from the use of technology for assaults that create conditions which mimic the symptoms of typical “schizophrenia” patients). Laing is justly and sensitively concerned with the inadequacy of the professional in the diagnostic situation. This inadequacy is based, first, on the difficulty of understanding any other person; and, second, on the professional's tendency to interpret the eccentric "other" from the perspective of his (the professional's) adjustment to an alienated social reality.
As an example of what we mean by an “alienated social reality” we may refer to the situation in which an initial psychiatric diagnosis occurs. The diagnosis is made “at the speed of business” by someone barely acquainted with the person diagnosed. Another example is the courtroom situation in which two lawyers argue about a matter in relation to which neither has any personal investment or any first-hand knowledge. A more extreme example is that in which a social matrix which is obviously pathological has become the basis for a conformist standard of virtue, as the “good” Nazi was expected to conform to the standards that prevailed in Germany in the 1930s.
The problem with all attempts to define psychic health by adaptation to a social matrix is that they assume that the social matrix itself provides a valid standard.
In this essay we are not primarily concerned with medical or psychiatric problems, since the people attacked do not—at least to begin with—have such problems, but with a criminal conspiracy that creates the appearance of such problems, either with deliberate intent and through a manipulation of the psychiatric profession, or with an ignorance of consequences of fantastic proportions. Either way, the psychiatric profession has been drawn into an unwitting complicity with the crimes herein described, and that community is challenged to take a leading role in bringing them to an end. Ignorance and error are possibly excusable. To allow this situation to persist after it has been brought to light would be to condemn the profession to accusations of criminal negligence.
*p. 83—During the eighties "abductees" claimed to have been abducted by aliens and used for experimentation. Psychologists confirmed that they really believed their own stories; and did not display additional unusual psychological characteristics or any marked evidence of pathology. If we rule out actual alien abductions, the evidence suggests an elaborate charade to cover-up or deflect attention from the pertinent fact, namely, experimentation involving involuntary human subjects.
If the abductees were in fact the subjects of an earlier generation of the experiments today being reported, it follows that the earlier victims were made to believe that their abductors were aliens. One means toward this accomplishment may have been the appearance of telepathy, which, we know now, can be created through technologies already in the hands of groups operating in the USA and elsewhere. We cannot doubt the power to create the illusion of the "alien" or extraterrestrial nature of the abductors, given the effect of the Orson Welles "War of the Worlds" radio drama. What we should wonder about is what lay behind such a fantastic subterfuge, if the "aliens" were concocted simply as a red herring to discourage investigation or deflect its course.
*p. 123—Opposition to overstepping by authorities and the waste and mis-use of resources is not based solely on the grounds of economics or defense of individual liberties but also on the ground of genuine national security.
The NSA, because of wrong priorities and mistaken preoccupations, cannot even protect their own computers from hacking, and now information collected by the NSA (much of it unnecessarily) is in the hands of criminals.
See NYT, Nov. 12, 2017 “Security Breach” : “A serial leak of the agency’s cyberweapons has damaged morale, slowed intelligence operations and resulted in hacking attacks on businesses and civilians worldwide.”
Consider also remarks made by Edward Snowden to the European Parliament in 2014:
"I believe that suspicionless surveillance not only fails to make us safe, but it actually makes us less safe. By squandering precious, limited resources on 'collecting it all,' we end up with more analysts trying to make sense of harmless political dissent and fewer investigators running down real leads. I believe investing in mass surveillance at the expense of traditional, proven methods can cost lives, and history has shown my concerns are justified.
"Despite the extraordinary intrusions of the NSA and EU national governments into private communications world-wide, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 'Underwear Bomber,' was allowed to board an airplane traveling from Europe to the United States in 2009. The 290 persons on board were not saved by mass surveillance but by his own incompetence, when he failed to detonate the device. While even Mutallab's father warned the US government he was dangerous in November 2009, our resources were tied up monitoring online games and tapping German ministers. That extraordinary tip-off didn't get Mutallab a dedicated US investigator. All we gave him was a US visa.
"Nor did the US government's comprehensive monitoring of Americans at home stop the Boston Bombers [in April 2013]. Despite the Russians specifically warning us about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the FBI couldn't do more than a cursory investigation—although they did plenty of worthless computer-based searching—and failed to discover the plot. 264 people were injured, and 3 died. The resources that could have paid for a real investigation had been spent on monitoring the call records of everyone in America."
Edward Snowden, Testimony to the European Parliament [2014], The Snowden Reader, Edited by David P. Fidler, 2015, Indiana University Press.
Problems of Surveillance, National Security, Police State Excesses, and Abuses of the new Technologies by Private Groups
The fears following 9/11 gave rise to a series of excesses in the national policies. These were first evident to the public in the misguided Iraq War. Second, they became evident through the release of information by Snowden. Less noticeable, perhaps, is the ubiquity, domestically, of surveillance operations, which, lacking due supervision, have been characterized by dubious objectives and methods, often involving private groups as well as authorized and unauthorized police personnel.
In many cases the laws have been slow to follow the wake of technological advances. The absence of laws and regulations to govern these activities has produced a vulnerability of the public to abuses.
An excess of trust has been conferred on those with access to these technologies. The assumption of the innocent public has been that those with access are involved in serious national security operations and police work, and that these matters should be left to the professionals. This point of view is as sadly naïve as the assumption of the public that those with special access “knew” there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The first necessity is to awaken the public to the true facts. People are unaware. As long as that is the case, due measures to promote the needed controls and supervision will be lacking. These will come only as the public is aroused. The public will only be aroused as the facts are drawn out of the shadows and made public.
A coordinated campaign should aim for A) the education and mobilization of the public and politicians; B) the passage of new legislation and formation of the necessary regulatory controls; C) the prosecution of serious abuses as criminal activities, whether perpetrated by “authorized” personnel or private groups.
These efforts should be brought to a focus in an overhaul of the entire security apparatus from the National Security Agency to the police departments across the country, to bring them into line with public safety, not the paranoid dreams of military people, police hacks and perverts.
This effort should form one plank in the platform of the Democratic Party in 2020.